Fully discrete semi-Lagrangian methods for advection of differential forms (Q695059)

This article deals with the numerical analysis of semi-Lagrangian methods for differential forms on \(n\)-dimensional manifolds. The scope is to solve advection-dominated advection-diffusion problems where a change of the character of the equation from parabolic to hyperbolic occurs. Using Lie-derivatives, this problem turns out to be a ``generalized advection-diffusion problem for time dependent \(p\)-forms'' which can be modelled through vector fields. The authors combine two common approaches, the Eulerian and the Lagrangian, in the semi-Lagrangian method for \(p\)-forms on \(n\)-dimensional manifolds and prove some general error bounds. For the concrete application, both an interpolation based and a Galerkin-projection based fully discrete semi-Lagrangian method are investigated. To this end, several test cases for the advection of 1-forms are considered and the convergence rates and \(L^2\)-errors of both fully discrete schemes are analyzed. It is observed that some convergence rates are better than the theory predicts and that the interpolation based scheme ``seems to lack of unconditional stability''.