No abstract uploaded!

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.

Most biochemical processes involve macromolecules in solution. The corresponding electrostatics is of central importance for understanding their structures and functions. An accurate and efficient numerical scheme is introduced to evaluate the corresponding electrostatic potential and force by solving the governing Poisson-Boltzmann equation. This paper focuses on the following issues: (i) the point charge singularity problem, (ii) the dielectric discontinuity problem across a molecular surface, and (iii) the infinite domain problem. Green's function associated with the point charges plus a harmonic function is introduced as the zeroth order approximation to the solution to solve the point charge singularity problem. A jump condition capturing finite difference scheme is adopted to solve the discontinuity problem across molecule surfaces, where a body-fitting grid is used. The infinite domain problem is solved by mapping the outer infinite domain into a finite domain. The corresponding stiffness matrix is symmetric and positive definite, therefore, fast algorithm such as preconditioned conjugate gradient method can be applied for inner iteration. Finally, the resulting scheme is second order accurate for both the potential and its gradient.

To avoid the order reduction when third order implicit-explicit Runge-Kutta time discretization is used together with the local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) spatial discretization, for solving convection-diffusion problems with time-dependent Dirichlet boundary conditions, we propose a strategy of boundary treatment at each intermediate stage in this paper. The proposed strategy can achieve optimal order of accuracy by numerical verification. Also by suitably setting numerical flux on the boundary in the LDG methods, and by establishing an important relationship between the gradient and interface jump of the numerical solution with the independent numerical solution of the gradient and the given boundary conditions, we build up the unconditional stability of the corresponding scheme, in the sense that the time step is only required to be upper bounded by a suitable positive constant, which is independent of the mesh size.

METHODS AND APPLICATIONS OF ANALYSIS. 2000 International Press Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 591-604, September 2000 012