Discrete artificial boundary conditions for nonlinear Schrödinger equations

Abstract

In this work we construct and analyze discrete artificial boundary conditions (ABCs) for different finite difference schemes to solve nonlinear Schrödinger equations. These new discrete boundary conditions are motivated by the continuous ABCs recently obtained by the potential strategy of Szeftel. Since these new nonlinear ABCs are based on the discrete ABCs for the linear problem we first review the well-known results for the linear Schrödinger equation. We present our approach for a couple of finite difference schemes, including the Crank–Nicholson scheme, the Dùran–Sanz-Serna scheme, the DuFort–Frankel method and several split-step (fractional-step) methods such as the Lie splitting, the Strang splitting and the relaxation scheme of Besse. Finally, several numerical tests illustrate the accuracy and stability of our new discrete approach for the considered finite difference schemes.