Antonella Zanna

Hans Z. Munthe-Kaas, Gilles Reinout W. Quispel, Antonella Zanna

A remarkable number of different numerical algorithms can be understood and analyzed using the concepts of symmetric spaces and Lie triple systems, which are well known in differential geometry from the study of spaces of constant curvature and their tangents. This theory can be used to unify a range of different topics, such as polar-type matrix decompositions, splitting methods for computation of the matrix exponential, composition of selfadjoint numerical integrators and dynamical systems with symmetries and reversing symmetries. The thread of this paper is the following: involutive automorphisms on groups induce a factorization at a group level, and a splitting at the algebra level. In this paper we will give an introduction to the mathematical theory behind these constructions, and review recent results. Furthermore, we present a new Yoshida-like technique, for self-adjoint numerical schemes, that allows to increase the order of preservation of symmetries by two units. Since all the time-steps are positive, the technique is particularly suited to stiff problems, where a negative time-step can cause instabilities.

Huiyan Xue, Antonella Zanna

We present new, explicit, volume-preserving vector fields for polynomial divergence-free vector fields of arbitrary degree (both positive and negative). The main idea is to decompose the divergence polynomial by means of an appropriate basis for polynomials: the monomial basis. For each monomial basis function, the split fields are then identified by collecting the appropriate terms in the vector field so that each split vector field is divergence free. We show that each split field can be integrated exactly by analytical methods. Thus, the composition yields a volume preserving numerical method. Our numerical tests indicate that the methods compare favorably to standard integrators both in the quality of the numerical solution and the computational effort.

Antonella Zanna

We consider the Euler equation of quasi-geostrophic fluids which is widely used in weather forecast. Our goal is to study explicit volume-preserving numerical methods for very long simulations on an energy and enstrophy preserving discretization. To this purpose, we compute the average fields and estimate statistical parameters. It is observed that the statistical parameters depend on the integrals of the discretization and that the computed parameters are affected by the error in those, even if the volume of the phase space is correctly preserved. We conclude that monitoring the error in the integrals by the explicit volume preserving method can be used as an indication of how good the estimated parameters are.

Olivier Verdier, Huiyan Xue, Antonella Zanna

In earlier work, Lomeli and Meiss used a generalization of the symplectic approach to study volume preserving generating differential forms. In particular, for the $\mathbb{R}^3$ case, the first to differ from the symplectic case, they derived thirty-six one-forms that generate exact volume preserving maps. Xue and Zanna had studied these differential forms in connection with the numerical solution of divergence-free differential equations: can such forms be used to devise new volume preserving integrators or to further understand existing ones? As a partial answer to this question, Xue and Zanna showed how six of the generating volume form were naturally associated to consistent, first order, volume preserving numerical integrators. In this paper, we investigate and classify the remaining cases. The main result is the reduction of the thirty-six cases to five essentially different cases, up to variable relabeling and adjunction. We classify these five cases, identifying two novel classes and associating the other three to volume preserving vector fields under a Hamiltonian or Lagrangian representation. We demonstrate how these generating form lead to consistent volume preserving schemes for volume preserving vector fields in $\mathbb{R}^3$.