Accuracy of product-formula algorithms (Q1181874)

The accuracy of the product-formula (PF) algorithm is analyzed for three basic problems: The convection equation, the diffusion equation and the Schrödinger equation. The numerical experiments show that the method can produce accurate solutions, but only for small time steps so the potential advantage of the unconditional stability turns out to be unexploitable. On the other hand spurious oscillations may occur in all PF methods. Finally it must be remarked an attractive feature of the PF methods: their time-discretization errors are only slightly affected by the spatial resolution, so that good temporal accuracy can be obtained in cases where a modest spatial resolution is sufficient.