A Hamiltonian, explicit algorithm with spectral accuracy for the `good' Boussinesq system (Q805424)

The authors are concerned with the numerical solution of partial differential equations in Hamiltonian form, by means of algorithms which preserve the Hamiltonian structure of the problem. The paper is devoted to a study of Hamiltonian, time-discrete, pseudo-spectral scheme for the soliton-producing `good' Boussinesq system. The time-discretization proposed by the authors preserves the Poisson structure associated with the continuous problem, but does not conserve energy. This is as it should be since, as the authors point out, it is not possible for a time-integration scheme to conserve both the Hamiltonian and the Poisson structure. In the implementation the discrete problem is Fourier transformed, and time-stepping is carried out in the frequency domain. Nonlinear stability and convergence of the scheme are studied. It is shown to be nonlinearly stable. Furthermore, for a smooth solution the error is of order \((\Delta t^ 2+\phi (h))\), where \(\phi\) (h) is spectrally small, and so the scheme is convergent. Numerical comparisons with other schemes are not presented, but the authors produce some numerical results which show the spectral spatial accuracy of the scheme.