Stability of asynchronous variational integrators (Q942274)

The authors study the linear stability of fully asynchronous variational integrators, i.e. symplectic integrators derived from a discrete variational principle admitting multiple time steps. One goal is to explain the different behaviour of these methods when they are applied in the context of molecular dynamics simulation and of computational solid mechanics, respectively. In the first case resonance instabilities often severely restrict the relative size of the time steps, whereas this effect very rarely appears in the latter case. The authors provide a rigorous theoretical analysis of the case that a harmonic oscillator with one degree of freedom whose potential energy decomposes into a stiff and a soft part is integrated with two different time steps. Based on these theoretical results and some numerical experiments, they offer an explanation of the above mentioned dichotomy, namely that weak long-range forces often present in molecular dynamics applications are the origin of the observed instabilities.