Krylov subspace spectral methods for the time-dependent Schrödinger equation with non-smooth potentials (Q1027787)

This paper presents modifications of Krylov subspace spectral (KSS) methods, which build on the work of Gene Golub and others pertaining to moments and Gaussian quadrature to produce high-order accurate approximate solutions to the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in the case where either the potential energy or the initial data is not a smooth function. These modifications consist of using various symmetric perturbations to compute off-diagonal elements of functions of matrices. It is demonstrated through analytical and numerical results that KSS methods, with these modifications, achieve the same high-order accuracy and possess the same stability properties as they do when applied to parabolic problems, even though the solutions to the Schrödinger equation do not possess the same smoothness.