Von Neumann Stability Analysis of DG-Like and PNPM-Like Schemes for PDEs with Globally Curl-Preserving Evolution of Vector Fields

This paper examines a class of involution-constrained PDEs where some part of the PDE system evolves a vector field whose curl remains zero or grows in proportion to specified source terms.Such PDEs are referred to as curl-free or curl-preserving,respectively.They arise very frequently in equations for hyperelasticity and compressible multiphase flow,in certain formulations of general relativity and in the numerical solution of Schrödinger’s equation.Experience has shown that if nothing special is done to account for the curl-preserving vector field,it can blow up in a finite amount of simulation time.In this paper,we catalogue a class of DG-like schemes for such PDEs.To retain the globally curl-free or curl-preserving constraints,the components of the vector field,as well as their higher moments,must be collocated at the edges of the mesh.They are updated using potentials collocated at the vertices of the mesh.The resulting schemes:(i)do not blow up even after very long integration times,(ii)do not need any special cleaning treatment,(iii)can oper-ate with large explicit timesteps,(iv)do not require the solution of an elliptic system and(v)can be extended to higher orders using DG-like methods.The methods rely on a spe-cial curl-preserving reconstruction and they also rely on multidimensional upwinding.The Galerkin projection,highly crucial to the design of a DG method,is now conducted at the edges of the mesh and yields a weak form update that uses potentials obtained at the verti-ces of the mesh with the help of a multidimensional Riemann solver.A von Neumann sta-bility analysis of the curl-preserving methods is conducted and the limiting CFL numbers of this entire family of methods are catalogued in this work.The stability analysis confirms that with the increasing order of accuracy,our novel curl-free methods have superlative phase accuracy while substantially reducing dissipation.We also show that PNPM-like methods,which only evolve the lower moments while reconstructing the higher moments,retain much of the excellent wave propagation characteristics of the DG-like methods while offering a much larger CFL number and lower computational complexity.The quadratic energy preservation of these methods is also shown to be excellent,especially at higher orders.The methods are also shown to be curl-preserving over long integration times.

Curl Constraint-Preserving Reconstruction and the Guidance it Gives for Mimetic Scheme Design

Several important PDE systems,like magnetohydrodynamics and computational electrodynamics,are known to support involutions where the divergence of a vector field evolves in divergence-free or divergence constraint-preserving fashion.Recently,new classes of PDE systems have emerged for hyperelasticity,compressible multiphase flows,so-called firstorder reductions of the Einstein field equations,or a novel first-order hyperbolic reformulation of Schrödinger’s equation,to name a few,where the involution in the PDE supports curl-free or curl constraint-preserving evolution of a vector field.We study the problem of curl constraint-preserving reconstruction as it pertains to the design of mimetic finite volume(FV)WENO-like schemes for PDEs that support a curl-preserving involution.(Some insights into discontinuous Galerkin(DG)schemes are also drawn,though that is not the prime focus of this paper.)This is done for two-and three-dimensional structured mesh problems where we deliver closed form expressions for the reconstruction.The importance of multidimensional Riemann solvers in facilitating the design of such schemes is also documented.In two dimensions,a von Neumann analysis of structure-preserving WENOlike schemes that mimetically satisfy the curl constraints,is also presented.It shows the tremendous value of higher order WENO-like schemes in minimizing dissipation and dispersion for this class of problems.Numerical results are also presented to show that the edge-centered curl-preserving(ECCP)schemes meet their design accuracy.This paper is the first paper that invents non-linearly hybridized curl-preserving reconstruction and integrates it with higher order Godunov philosophy.By its very design,this paper is,therefore,intended to be forward-looking and to set the stage for future work on curl involution-constrained PDEs.