We provide a comprehensive survey of splitting and composition methods for
the numerical integration of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Splitting
methods constitute an appropriate choice when the vector field associated with
the ODE can be decomposed into several pieces and each of them is integrable.
This class of integrators are explicit, simple to implement and preserve
structural properties of the system. In consequence, they are specially useful
in geometric numerical integration. In addition, the numerical solution
obtained by splitting schemes can be seen as the exact solution to a perturbed
system of ODEs possessing the same geometric properties as the original system.
This backward error interpretation has direct implications for the qualitative
behavior of the numerical solution as well as for the error propagation along
time. Closely connected with splitting integrators are composition methods. We
analyze the order conditions required by a method to achieve a given order and
summarize the different families of schemes one can find in the literature.
Finally, we illustrate the main features of splitting and composition methods
on several numerical examples arising from applications.Comment: Review paper; 56 pages, 6 figures, 8 table
