# Tag Info

Accepted

### What does "symplectic" mean in reference to numerical integrators, and does SciPy's odeint use them?

Let me start off with corrections. No, odeint doesn't have any symplectic integrators. No, symplectic integration doesn't mean conservation of energy. What does ...
• 11.4k
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### BDF vs implicit Runge Kutta time stepping

Yes, there aren't too many resources on this for some reason. For a very long time, the standard goto was "just use BDF methods". This mantra was set in stone for few historical reasons: for ...
• 11.4k
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### Why are Runge-Kutta and Euler's method so different?

First thing, you could have mentioned, what RK method you have used. Here is a brief introduction to RK methods and Euler method, working, there merits and demerits. Euler method Euler's method is ...
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### Is it well known that some optimization problems are equivalent to time-stepping?

As Jed Brown mentioned, the connection between gradient descent in nonlinear optimization and time stepping of dynamical systems is rediscovered with some frequency (understandably, since it's a very ...
• 11.9k
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### How to formulate lumped mass matrix in FEM

I do not think that there is a definite answer to this, because it might change from one topic to other (and also depends on the type of elements you are using). There are some recent papers talking ...
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### What does "symplectic" mean in reference to numerical integrators, and does SciPy's odeint use them?

To complement Chris Rackauckas answer, to state some of the mathematical nonsense as well as some stuff you almost certainly know, a dynamical system is Hamiltonian if there is a description with ...
• 2,189
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### Why is leapfrog integration symplectic and RK4 not, if the latter is more accurate?

TL;DR: It depends on what kind of accuracy you need. Energy conservation does not automatically equal accuracy. Suppose, you want to simulate the solar system, and you are using a solver that – to ...
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• 5,249

### Do there exist low-storage Runge–Kutta methods with an order larger than four?

Another good starting point is the excellent paper of Kennedy, Carpenter, & Lewis (KCL2000): https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-9274(99)00141-5 My own paper focuses more on the mechanics of low-...
• 16.2k

### Dual time stepping for fluid dynamics

I believe you're switching around the definitions of "inner" and "outer" stepping (this nomenclature gets worse in segregated schemes where you have at least 3 separate iterative schemes going on.) ...
• 2,203
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### How does the L-stability or A-stability of a scheme relate to its ability to preserve a quadratic invariant?

In a certain sense, @Geoff Oxberry is correct in saying that stability and preservation of quadratic invariants are not directly related. For instance, there exist explicit methods that will preserve ...
• 16.2k

### Space-time finite element discretization for time-dependent PDEs

Full space-time discretization of time-dependent partial differential equations is indeed a thing. If you use a structured mesh in time (in the sense that the time discretization does not depend on ...
• 11.9k
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### Solve an ODE with positivity-preserving property unconditionally

The two properties are usually called positivity-preserving and monotonicity-preserving (makes it easier to find this question). Looking at http://www.ams.org/journals/mcom/2006-75-254/S0025-5718-05-...
• 11.4k
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### The velocity Verlet method and variable time steps

The second formula is just the velocity verlet, and it's correct but if you adapt time steps then it's not symplectic. In a separate answer I describe in quite detail that symplecticness is a global ...
• 11.4k

### Initial Value Problem using Finite Element

There are several equivalent ways of implementing Dirichlet boundary conditions with the finite element method. I'll give a brief overview, but you'll probably need more details, which can be found in ...
• 8,087

### How does the L-stability or A-stability of a scheme relate to its ability to preserve a quadratic invariant?

Stability and preservation of invariants are unrelated. Hairer does a nice job of proving how various methods preserve different kinds of invariants in his book Geometric Integration. Chapter III is ...
• 29.8k
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### RATTLE numerical integrator example

The following snippet of code is an implementation of RATTLE on a system with the constraint $g(x, y) = K x^2 + y^2 - 1 = 0$. ...
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### Why are Runge-Kutta and Euler's method so different?

Forgive me for adding a me-too answer, but I just couldn't resist including this page from Press, et al: "Numerical Recipes in C":
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### Fourth order IMEX Runge-Kutta method

I think the work of Kennedy and Carpenter (mentioned already by @GoHokies) is still the definitive study on this topic. The journal paper can be found here; for some reason Google Scholar only ...
• 16.2k

### Comparison of velocity Verlet and leapfrog algorithms

The shortest answer is that the Verlet / Leapfrog methods are symplectic and time reversible, and these are desirable numerical properties that reflect the physical reality of certain simulation ...
• 2,375