Mimetic Explicit Time Discretiztions

Abstract: This paper is part of a program to combine a staggered time and staggered spatial discretization of continuum mechanics problems so that any property of the continuum that is proved using vector calculus can be proven in an analogous way for the discretized system. We require that the discretizations be second order accurate and have a conserved quantity that approximates the energy for the system and guarantees stability for a reasonable constraint on the time step. We also require that the discretization is time explicit so as to avoid the solution of large system of possibly nonlinear algebraic equations. The well known Yee grid discretization of Maxwell's equations is the same as our discretization and is an early example of using a staggered space and time grid . To motivate our discussion we begin by studying the staggered time or leapfrog discretization of the harmonic oscillator and use this to introduce the modification of the energy that is conserved. Next we use systems of linear equations to motivate the definition of the modified energy for more complex systems of ordinary differential equations and then apply our ideas to the scalar wave equation in one spatial dimension. We finish by discretizing the three dimensional scalar wave and Maxwell's equations. Because the spatial discretization is mimetic, we obtain that the divergence of the electric and magnetic fields are constant when there are no sources. Using the mimetic properties the proof of this trivial and is essentially the same as in the continuum.