Uniformly accurate numerical schemes for the nonlinear Dirac equation in the nonrelativistic limit regime

Abstract

We apply the two-scale formulation approach to propose uniformly accurate (UA) schemes for solving the nonlinear Dirac equation in the nonrelativistic limit regime. The nonlinear Dirac equation involves two small scales $\varepsilon$ and $\varepsilon^2$ with $\varepsilon\to0$ in the nonrelativistic limit regime. The small parameter causes high oscillations in time which brings severe numerical burden for classical numerical methods. We transform our original problem as a two-scale formulation and present a general strategy to tackle a class of highly oscillatory problems involving the two small scales $\varepsilon$ and $\varepsilon^2$. Suitable initial data for the two-scale formulation is derived to bound the time derivatives of the augmented solution. Numerical schemes with uniform (with respect to $\varepsilon\in (0,1]$) spectral accuracy in space and uniform first order or second order accuracy in time are proposed. Numerical experiments are done to confirm the UA property.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures. To appear on Communications in Mathematical Science