Geshuo Wang

Geshuo Wang, Jingwei Hu

Low-rank methods for kinetic equations have attracted increasing attention due to their effectiveness in reducing the high dimensionality of phase space. In our previous work [G. Wang & J. Hu, J. Comput. Phys. 558 (2026) 114884], we developed a dynamical low-rank method based on the projector-splitting integrator in tensor-train (TT) format, in which explicit time integration is employed in all substeps. As a result, the method is subject to severe stability constraints in the strongly collisional regimes. In this paper, we consider kinetic equations with the (nonlinear) Fokker--Planck collision operator and develop a dynamical low-rank method that employs implicit or implicit-explicit (IMEX) discretizations in appropriate substeps to overcome stiffness. In these implicit substeps, the resulting equations can be formulated as matrix or tensor Sylvester equations, for which we propose efficient direct solvers by exploiting their underlying structure. The overall computational cost of the proposed method scales linearly with respect to the number of grid points in a single velocity dimension, comparable to that of a fully explicit low-rank scheme. We demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method on several representative kinetic test problems.

Geshuo Wang, Jingwei Hu

The numerical solution of kinetic equations is challenging due to the high dimensionality of the underlying phase space. In this paper, we develop a dynamical low-rank method based on the projector-splitting integrator in tensor-train (TT) format. The key idea is to discretize the three-dimensional velocity variable using tensor trains while treating the spatial variable as a parameter, thereby exploiting the low-rank structure of the distribution function in velocity space. In contrast to the standard step-and-truncate approach, this method updates the tensor cores through a sweeping procedure, allowing the use of relatively small TT-ranks and leading to substantial reductions in memory usage and computational cost. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach on several representative kinetic equations.