Energy-conserving explicit and implicit time integration methods for the multi-dimensional Hermite-DG discretization of the Vlasov-Maxwell equations

TL;DR

This paper investigates energy-preserving explicit and implicit time integration methods for Hermite-DG discretizations of the Vlasov-Maxwell equations, emphasizing the importance of invariant preservation for numerical accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces modified relaxation Runge-Kutta methods capable of preserving energy invariants during the simulation of Vlasov-Maxwell equations.

Findings

Energy-preserving methods maintain invariants during simulations.

Upwind fluxes introduce numerical energy dissipation.

Energy-preserving methods improve overall accuracy.

Abstract

We study the conservation properties of the Hermite-discontinuous Galerkin (Hermite-DG) approximation of the Vlasov-Maxwell equations. In this semi-discrete formulation, the total mass is preserved independently for every plasma species. Further, an energy invariant exists if central numerical fluxes are used in the DG approximation of Maxwell's equations, while a dissipative term is present when upwind fluxes are employed. In general, traditional temporal integrators might fail to preserve invariants associated with conservation laws during the time evolution. Hence, we analyze the capability of explicit and implicit Runge-Kutta (RK) temporal integrators to preserve such invariants. Since explicit RK methods can only ensure preservation of linear invariants but do not provide any control on the system energy, we consider modified explicit RK methods in the family of relaxation Runge-Kutta methods (RRK). These methods can be tuned to preserve the energy invariant at the continuous or semi-discrete level, a distinction that is important when upwind fluxes are used in the discretization of Maxwell's equations since upwind provides a numerical source of energy dissipation that is not present when central fluxes are used. We prove that the proposed methods are able to preserve the energy invariant and to maintain the semi-discrete energy dissipation (if present) according to the discretization of Maxwell's equations. An extensive set of numerical experiments corroborates the theoretical findings. It also suggests that maintaining the semi-discrete energy dissipation when upwind fluxes are used leads to an overall better accuracy of the method relative to using upwind fluxes while forcing exact energy conservation.