In this paper we introduce a definition of the local conservation property for numerical methods solving time dependent conservation laws, which generalizes the classical local conservation definition. The motivation of our definition is the Lax-Wendroff theorem, and thus we prove it for locally conservative numerical schemes per our definition in one and two space dimensions. Several numerical methods, including continuous Galerkin methods and compact schemes, which do not fit the classical local conservation definition, are given as examples of locally conservative methods under our generalized definition.

In this paper we consider the drift-diffusion (DD) model of one dimensional semiconductor devices, which is a system involving not only first derivative convection terms but also second derivative diffusion terms and a coupled Poisson potential equation. Optimal error estimates are obtained for both the semi-discrete and fully discrete local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) schemes with smooth solutions. In the fully discrete scheme, we couple the implicit-explicit (IMEX) time discretization with the LDG spatial discretization, in order to allow larger time steps and to save computational cost. The main technical difficulty in the analysis is to treat the inter-element jump terms which arise from the discontinuous nature of the numerical method and the nonlinearity and coupling of the models. A simulation is also performed to validate the analysis.

The numerical solution of the one-dimensional nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation on an unbounded domain is studied in this paper. Split local absorbing boundary (SLAB) conditions are obtained by the operator splitting method, then the original problem is reduced to an initial boundary value problem on a bounded computational domain, which can be solved by the finite difference method. Several numerical examples are provided to show the advantages and effectiveness of the given method, and some interesting collision behaviors are also observed.

Solving wave propagation problems within heterogeneous media has been of great interest and has a wide range of applications in physics and engineering. The design of numerical methods for such general wave propagation problems is challenging because the energy conserving property has to be incorporated in the numerical algorithms in order to minimize the phase or shape errors after long time integration. In this paper, we focus on multi-dimensional wave problems and consider linear second-order wave equation in heterogeneous media. We develop and analyze an LDG method, in which numerical fluxes are carefully designed to maintain the energy preserving property and accuracy. Compatible high order energy conserving time integrators are also proposed. The optimal error estimates and the energy conserving property are proved for the semi-discrete methods. Our numerical experiments demonstrate optimal rates of convergence, and show that the errors of the numerical solutions do not grow significantly in time due to the energy conserving property.

In this paper we investigate staggered discontinuous Galerkin method for the Helmholtz equation with large wave number on general quadrilateral and polygonal meshes. The method is highly flexible by allowing rough grids such as the trapezoidal grids and highly distorted grids, and at the same time, is numerical flux free. Furthermore, it allows hanging nodes, which can be simply treated as additional vertices. By exploiting a modified duality argument, the stability and convergence can be proved under the condition that \kappa h is sufficiently small, where \kappa h is the wave number and \kappa h is the mesh size. Error estimates for both the scalar and vector variables in \kappa h norm are established. Several numerical experiments are tested to verify our theoretical results and to present the capability of our method for capturing singular solutions.