When evolving in time the solution of a hyperbolic partial differential
equation, it is often desirable to use high order strong stability preserving
(SSP) time discretizations. These time discretizations preserve the
monotonicity properties satisfied by the spatial discretization when coupled
with the first order forward Euler, under a certain time-step restriction.
While the allowable time-step depends on both the spatial and temporal
discretizations, the contribution of the temporal discretization can be
isolated by taking the ratio of the allowable time-step of the high order
method to the forward Euler time-step. This ratio is called the strong
stability coefficient. The search for high order strong stability time-stepping
methods with high order and large allowable time-step had been an active area
of research. It is known that implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods exist only up to
sixth order. However, if we restrict ourselves to solving only linear
autonomous problems, the order conditions simplify and we can find implicit SSP
Runge-Kutta methods of any linear order. In the current work we aim to find
very high linear order implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods that are optimal in
terms of allowable time-step. Next, we formulate an optimization problem for
implicit-explicit (IMEX) SSP Runge-Kutta methods and find implicit methods with
large linear stability regions that pair with known explicit SSP Runge-Kutta
methods of orders plin=3,4,6 as well as optimized IMEX SSP Runge-Kutta pairs
that have high linear order and nonlinear orders p=2,3,4. These methods are
then tested on sample problems to verify order of convergence and to
demonstrate the sharpness of the SSP coefficient and the typical behavior of
these methods on test problems