Benchmarking numerical methods for lattice equations with the Toda lattice (Q2000081)

The paper is devoted to the comparison of several standard methods for the time integration of the equations of motion describing the Toda lattice. This is a well-known integrable model describing an infinite chain of particles on a line with a nearest-neighbor exponential interaction. Special attention is paid to the perfomance of the different schemes for capturing the solitons and highly oscillatory solutions. A numerical inverse scattering transform proposed by the same authors is used to generate accurate solutions of the Toda lattice for arbitrary large values of time, which are then used as the exact solution in the comparisons. Classical second- and fourth-order numerical time integrators are tested. Specifically, the second-order schemes are the midpoint rule and the Störmer-Verlet method, whereas fourth-order methods include the Adams-Basforth, the classical Runge-Kutta and the well-known Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg pair. Numerical tests show that the Störmer-Verlet method performs quite well. This should come as no surprise, given the Hamiltonian character of the system. Among the fourth-order schemes, the classical Runge-Kutta method seems to offer the best performance, but in this case no symplectic integrators have been tested.