Lie Group Spectral Variational Integrators

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new class of high-order variational integrators on Lie groups that are symplectic, momentum-preserving, and capable of high accuracy and stability for large time steps, demonstrated through rigid body examples.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel framework for constructing high-order variational integrators on Lie groups that are both symplectic and momentum-preserving, with potential for broad applications.

Findings

Integrators are symplectic and momentum-preserving.

Methods can be constructed to be arbitrarily high-order.

Numerical examples confirm stability and accuracy for large time steps.

Abstract

We present a new class of high-order variational integrators on Lie groups. We show that these integrators are symplectic, momentum preserving, and can be constructed to be of arbitrarily high-order, or can be made to converge geometrically. Furthermore, these methods are stable and accurate for very large time steps. We demonstrate the construction of one such variational integrator for the rigid body, and discuss how this construction could be generalized to other related Lie group problems. We close with several numerical examples which demonstrate our claims, and discuss further extensions of our work.