Simulation of electromagnetic wave propagation in metamaterials leads to more complicated time domain Maxwell's equations than the standard Maxwell's equations in free space. In this paper, we develop and analyze a non-dissipative discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for solving the Maxwell's equations in Drude metamaterials. Previous discontinuous Galerkin methods in the literature for electromagnetic wave propagation in metamaterials were either non-dissipative but sub-optimal, or dissipative and optimal. Our method uses a different and simple choice of numerical fluxes, achieving provable non-dissipative stability and optimal error estimates simultaneously. We prove the stability and optimal error estimates for both semi- and fully discrete DG schemes, with the leap-frog time discretization for the fully discrete case. Numerical results are given to demonstrate that the DG method can solve metamaterial Maxwell's equations effectively.

In this paper, a new type of finite difference Hermite weighted essentially non-oscillatory (HWENO) schemes are constructed for solving Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) equations. Point values of both the solution and its first derivatives are used in the HWENO reconstruction and evolved via time advancing. While the evolution of the solution is still through the classical numerical fluxes to ensure convergence to weak solutions, the evolution of the first derivatives of the solution is through a simple dimension-by-dimension non-conservative procedure to gain efficiency. The main advantages of this new scheme include its compactness in the spatial field and its simplicity in the reconstructions. Extensive numerical experiments in one and two dimensional cases are performed to verify the accuracy, high resolution and efficiency of this new scheme.

This paper is concerned with an interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (IPDG) method based on a flexible type of non-polynomial local approximation space for the Helmholtz equation with varying wavenumber. The local approximation space consists of multiple polynomial-modulated phase functions which can be chosen according to the phase information of the solution. We obtain some {approximation} properties for this space and \textit{a prior} $L^2$ error estimates for the \textit{h}-convergence of the IPDG method using duality argument. We also provide ample numerical examples to show that, building phase information into the local spaces often gives more accurate results comparing to using the standard polynomial spaces.

In this paper, we analyze implicit-explicit (IMEX) Runge-Kutta (RK) time discretization methods for solving linear convection-diffusion equations. The diffusion operator is treated implicitly via the embedded discontinuous Galerkin (EDG) method and the convection operator explicitly via the upwinding discontinuous Galerkin method.

In this paper, we apply the local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method to 2D Keller--Segel (KS) chemotaxis model. We improve the results upon (Y. Epshteyn and A. Kurganov, SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis, 47 (2008), 368-408) and give optimal rate of convergence under special finite element spaces before the blow-up occurs (the exact solutions are smooth). Moreover, to construct physically relevant numerical approximations, we consider $P^1$ LDG scheme and develop a positivity-preserving limiter to the scheme, extending the idea in (Y. Zhang, X. Zhang and C.-W. Shu, Journal of Computational Physics, 229 (2010), 8918-8934). With this limiter, we can prove the $L^1$-stability of the numerical scheme. Numerical experiments are performed to demonstrate the good performance of the positivity-preserving LDG scheme. Moreover, it is known that the chemotaxis model will yield blow-up solutions under certain initial conditions. We numerically demonstrate how to find the approximate blow-up time by using the $L^2$-norm of the $L^1$-stable numerical solution.

In this paper, we develop a second-order asymptotic-preserving and positivity-preserving discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme for the Kerr-Debye model. By using the approach first introduced by Zhang and Shu in Ref.~\refcite{ZhSh:04} with an energy estimate and Taylor expansion, the asymptotic-preserving property of the semi-discrete DG methods is proved rigorously. In addition, we propose a class of unconditional positivity-preserving implicit-explicit (IMEX) Runge-Kutta methods for the system of ordinary differential equations arising from the semi-discretization of the Kerr-Debye model. The new IMEX Runge-Kutta methods are based on the modification of the strong-stability-preserving (SSP) implicit Runge-Kutta method and have second-order accuracy. The numerical results validate our analysis.

In this paper, we analyze the stability of the fourth order Runge-Kutta method for integrating semi-discrete approximations of time-dependent partial differential equations. Our study focuses on linear problems and covers general semi-bounded spatial discretizations. A counter example is given to show that the classical four-stage fourth order Runge-Kutta method can not preserve the one-step strong stability, even though the ordinary differential equation system is energy-decaying. But with an energy argument, we show that the strong stability property holds in two steps under an appropriate time step constraint. Based on this fact, the stability extends to general well-posed linear systems. As an application, we utilize the results to examine the stability of the fourth order Runge-Kutta approximations of several specific method of lines schemes for hyperbolic problems, including the spectral Galerkin method and the discontinuous Galerkin method.

A new augmented method is proposed for elliptic interface problems with a piecewise variable coefficient that has a finite jump across a smooth interface. The main motivation is to get not only a second order accurate solution but also a second order accurate gradient from each side of the interface. Key to the new method is introducing the jump in the normal derivative of the solution as an augmented variable and rewriting the interface problem as a new PDE that consists of a leading Laplacian operator plus lower order derivative terms near the interface. In this way, the leading second order derivative jump relations are independent of the jump in the coefficient that appears only in the lower order terms after the scaling. An upwind type discretization is used for the finite difference discretization at the irregular grid points on or near the interface so that the resulting coefficient matrix is an M-matrix. A multigrid solver is used to solve the linear system of equations, and the GMRES iterative method is used to solve the augmented variable. Second order convergence for the solution and the gradient from each side of the interface is proved in this paper. Numerical examples for general elliptic interface problems confirm the theoretical analysis and efficiency of the new method.

We propose a simple fast spectral method for the Boltzmann collision operator with general collision kernels. In contrast to the direct spectral method [L. Pareschi and G. Russo, SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 37 (2000), pp. 1217–1245; I. M. Gamba and S. H. Tharkabhushanam, J. Comput. Phys., 228 (2009), pp. 2012–2036], which requires O(N6) memory to store precomputed weights and has O(N6) numerical complexity, the new method has complexity O(MN4 log N), where N is the number of discretization points in each of the three velocity dimensions and M is the total number of discretization points on the sphere and M ≪ N2. Furthermore, it requires no precomputation for the variable hard sphere model and only O(MN4) memory to store precomputed functions for more general collision kernels. Although a faster spectral method is available [C. Mouhot and L. Pareschi, Math. Comp., 75 (2006), pp. 1833–1852] (with complexity O(MN3 logN)), it works only for hard sphere molecules, thus limiting its use for practical problems. Our new method, on the other hand, can apply to arbitrary collision kernels. A series of numerical tests is performed to illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method.

What is the shape of a uniformly massive object that generates a gravitational potential equivalent to that of two equal point-masses? If the weight of each point-mass is sufficiently small compared to the distance between the points then the answer is a pair of balls of equal radius, one centered at each of the two points, but otherwise it is a certain domain of revolution about the axis passing through the two points. The existence and uniqueness of such a domain is known, but an explicit parameterization is known only in the plane where the region is referred to as a Neumann oval. We construct a four-dimensional “Neumann ovaloid”, solving explicitly this inverse potential problem.