Runge-Kutta convolution coercivity and its use for time-dependent boundary integral equations

A coercivity property of temporal convolution operators is an essential tool in the analysis of time-dependent boundary integral equations and their space and time discretisations. It is known that this coercivity property is inherited by convolution quadrature time discretisation based on A-stable multistep methods, which are of order at most two. Here we study the ques- tion as to which Runge–Kutta-based convolution quadrature methods inherit the convolution coercivity property. It is shown that this holds without any restriction for the third-order Radau IIA method, and on permitting a shift in the Laplace domain variable, this holds for all algebraically stable Runge– Kutta methods and hence for methods of arbitrary order. As an illustration, the discrete convolution coercivity is used to analyse the stability and convergence properties of the time discretisation of a non-linear boundary integral equation that originates from a non-linear scattering problem for the linear wave equation. Numerical experiments illustrate the error behaviour of the Runge–Kutta convolution quadrature time discretisation

Time-dependent electromagnetic scattering from thin layers

The scattering of electromagnetic waves from obstacles with wave-material interaction in thin layers on the surface is described by generalized impedance boundary conditions, which provide effective approximate models. In particular, this includes a thin coating around a perfect conductor and the skin effect of a highly conducting material. The approach taken in this work is to derive, analyse and discretize a system of time-dependent boundary integral equations that determines the tangential traces of the scattered electric and magnetic fields. In a second step the fields are evaluated in the exterior domain by a representation formula, which uses the time-dependent potential operators of Maxwell’s equations. A key role in the well-posedness of the time-dependent boundary integral equations and the stability of the numerical discretization is taken by the coercivity of the Calderón operator for the time-harmonic Maxwell’s equations with frequencies in a complex half-plane. This entails the coercivity of the full boundary operator that includes the impedance operator. The system of time-dependent boundary integral equations is discretized with Runge–Kutta based convolution quadrature in time and Raviart–Thomas boundary elements in space. The full discretization is proved to be stable and convergent, with explicitly given rates in the case of sufficient regularity. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical experiments

Convolution quadrature for the wave equation with a nonlinear impedance boundary condition

A rarely exploited advantage of time-domain boundary integral equations compared to their frequency counterparts is that they can be used to treat certain nonlinear problems. In this work we investigate the scattering of acoustic waves by a bounded obstacle with a nonlinear impedance boundary condition. We describe a boundary integral formulation of the problem and prove without any smoothness assumptions on the solution the convergence of a full discretization: Galerkin in space and convolution quadrature in time. If the solution is sufficiently regular, we prove that the discrete method converges at optimal rates. Numerical evidence in 3D supports the theory

Mini-Workshop: Efficient and Robust Approximation of the Helmholtz Equation

The accurate and efficient treatment of wave propogation phenomena is still a challenging problem. A prototypical equation is the Helmholtz equation at high wavenumbers. For this equation, Babuška & Sauter showed in 2000 in their seminal SIAM Review paper that standard discretizations must fail in the sense that the ratio of true error and best approximation error has to grow with the frequency. This has spurred the development of alternative, non-standard discretization techniques. This workshop focused on evaluating and comparing these different approaches also with a view to their applicability to more general wave propagation problems

Asymptotic stability of the multidimensional wave equation coupled with classes of positive-real impedance boundary conditions

This paper proves the asymptotic stability of the multidimensional wave equation posed on a bounded open Lipschitz set, coupled with various classes of positive-real impedance boundary conditions, chosen for their physical relevance: time-delayed, standard diffusive (which includes the Riemann-Liouville fractional integral) and extended diffusive (which includes the Caputo fractional derivative). The method of proof consists in formulating an abstract Cauchy problem on an extended state space using a dissipative realization of the impedance operator, be it finite or infinite-dimensional. The asymptotic stability of the corresponding strongly continuous semigroup is then obtained by verifying the sufficient spectral conditions derived by Arendt and Batty (Trans. Amer. Math. Soc., 306 (1988)) as well as Lyubich and V\~u (Studia Math., 88 (1988))

Overresolving in the Laplace domain for convolution quadrature methods

Convolution quadrature (CQ) methods have enjoyed tremendous interest in recent years as an efficient tool for solving time-domain wave problems in unbounded domains via boundary integral equation techniques. In this paper we consider CQ type formulations for the parallel space-time evaluation of multistep or stiffly accurate Runge--Kutta rules for the wave equation. In particular, we decouple the number of Laplace domain solves from the number of time steps. This allows us to overresolve in the Laplace domain by computing more Laplace domain solutions than there are time steps. We use techniques from complex approximation theory to analyze the error of the CQ approximation of the underlying time-stepping rule when overresolving in the Laplace domain and show that the performance is intimately linked to the location of the poles of the solution operator. Several examples using boundary integral equation formulations in the Laplace domain are presented to illustrate the main results. Read More: http://epubs.siam.org/doi/10.1137/16M106474