Backward error analysis for multi-symplectic integration methods (Q1412183)

This paper is concerned with some numerical integrators of partial differential equations that can be written in the form: \( K z_t + L z_x = \nabla_z S(z) \) where \( z= z(t,x) \in {\mathbb R}^d,\) \( K,\) and \( L \) are given constant skew symmetric matrices and \( S : {\mathbb R}^d \to {\mathbb R}\) is a given scalar smooth function, that preserve a discrete version of the symplectic conservation laws. Since the above formulation is a natural generalization of a Hamiltonian system of ordinary differential equation (ODEs) the methods under consideration are called multi-symplectic integrators. Here the authors restrict their study to a nonlinear wave equation \( u_{tt} = \partial_x g'( u_x ) - f( u )\), \( t \in [ t_0, t_f ]\), \(x \in [0 , l ]\) with \(g\) and \(f\) smooth functions. Such a equation can be written in the above form with \( z = [ u , v = u_t, w = u_x , p = - g'(w) ]^T \) and \( S(z) = (1/2) v^2 + p w + g(w) + f(u) \) and possess the conservation laws of symplecticity, energy and momentum. In this context a multi-symplectic discretization called the Euler box scheme is proposed and the conservation of some discrete versions of the conservation laws is studied. Then, the concept of backward error analysis used for symplectic integrators for ODEs is generalized in several ways (termed as BEA-\(i\), \(i=1,\dots\)) to these multi-symplectic integrators obtaining modified equations that preserve the (modified) conservation laws to higher order for some particular equations as the nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation. Finally some numerical experiments with the sine-Gordon equation \( u_{tt} = u_{xx} - \sin (u), x \in [0,1],\) with periodic boundary conditions and the Euler box scheme are presented and the behaviour of BEA-\(i\) are analyzed for several values of \( \Delta t \) and \( \Delta x \) of the mesh size.