Uniform error bounds of exponential wave integrator methods for the long-time dynamics of the Dirac equation with small potentials

TL;DR

This paper introduces and analyzes two explicit exponential wave integrator Fourier pseudospectral methods for simulating the long-time behavior of the Dirac equation with small potentials, providing uniform error bounds and numerical validation.

Contribution

The paper develops two spectral methods with uniform error bounds for the Dirac equation's long-time dynamics, extending their applicability to small potential regimes.

Findings

Methods achieve spectral accuracy in space and second-order in time.

Error bounds are uniform up to time scale 1/ε.

Numerical results confirm theoretical error estimates and demonstrate method effectiveness.

Abstract

Two exponential wave integrator Fourier pseudospectral (EWI-FP) methods are presented and analyzed for the long-time dynamics of the Dirac equation with small potentials characterized by $\varepsilon \in (0, 1]$ a dimensionless parameter. Based on the (symmetric) exponential wave integrator for temporal derivatives in phase space followed by applying the Fourier pseudospectral discretization for spatial derivatives, the EWI-FP methods are explicit and of spectral accuracy in space and second-order accuracy in time for any fixed $\varepsilon = \varepsilon_0$. Uniform error bounds are rigorously carried out at $O(h^{m_0}+\tau^2)$ up to the time at $O(1/\varepsilon)$ with the mesh size $h$, time step $\tau$ and $m_0$ an integer depending on the regularity of the solution. Extensive numerical results are reported to confirm our error bounds and comparisons of two methods are shown. Finally, dynamics of the Dirac equation in 2D are presented to validate the numerical schemes.