Efficient exponential Runge–Kutta methods of high order: construction and implementation

Abstract

Exponential Runge–Kutta methods have shown to be competitive for the time integration of stiff semilinear parabolic PDEs. The current construction of stiffly accurate exponential Runge–Kutta methods, however, relies on a convergence result that requires weakening many of the order conditions, resulting in schemes whose stages must be implemented in a sequential way. In this work, after showing a stronger convergence result, we are able to derive two new families of fourth- and fifth-order exponential Runge–Kutta methods, which, in contrast to the existing methods, have multiple stages that are independent of one another and share the same format, thereby allowing them to be implemented in parallel or simultaneously, and making the methods to behave like using with much less stages. Moreover, all of their stages involve only one linear combination of the product of \(\varphi \)-functions (using the same argument) with vectors. Overall, these features make these new methods to be much more efficient to implement when compared to the existing methods of the same orders. Numerical experiments on a one-dimensional semilinear parabolic problem, a nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and a two-dimensional Gray–Scott model are given to confirm the accuracy and efficiency of the two newly constructed methods.