The paper develops high-order accurate physical-constraints-preserving finite
difference WENO schemes for special relativistic hydrodynamical (RHD)
equations, built on the local Lax-Friedrich splitting, the WENO reconstruction,
the physical-constraints-preserving flux limiter, and the high-order strong
stability preserving time discretization. They are extensions of the
positivity-preserving finite difference WENO schemes for the non-relativistic
Euler equations. However, developing physical-constraints-preserving methods
for the RHD system becomes much more difficult than the non-relativistic case
because of the strongly coupling between the RHD equations, no explicit
expressions of the primitive variables and the flux vectors, in terms of the
conservative vector, and one more physical constraint for the fluid velocity in
addition to the positivity of the rest-mass density and the pressure. The key
is to prove the convexity and other properties of the admissible state set and
discover a concave function with respect to the conservative vector replacing
the pressure which is an important ingredient to enforce the
positivity-preserving property for the non-relativistic case. Several one- and
two-dimensional numerical examples are used to demonstrate accuracy,
robustness, and effectiveness of the proposed physical-constraints-preserving
schemes in solving RHD problems with large Lorentz factor, or strong
discontinuities, or low rest-mass density or pressure etc.Comment: 39 pages, 13 figure
