On the construction of geometric integrators in the RKMK class (Q1569882)

The author discusses the construction of integrators for differential equations living on homogeneous spaces, i.e. spaces on which a Lie group is acting. The basic idea is to transform the differential equation into one on the Lie algebra and solve this instead. As the Lie algebra is a vector space, any standard Runge-Kutta method can be applied there. The first part of the article introduces the necessary differential geometry: Lie group actions, equivariant maps and infinitesimal generators. The second part discusses various ways of introducing coordinates on the Lie group. This includes the exponential map, the Cayley transform and higher order Padé approximations. Finally, the efficiency of the different coordinate systems is compared for two concrete numerical examples.