An optimization-based positivity-preserving limiter in semi-implicit discontinuous Galerkin schemes solving Fokker-Planck equations

Abstract: For high-order accurate schemes such as discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods solving Fokker-Planck equations, it is desired to efficiently enforce positivity without losing conservation and high-order accuracy, especially for implicit time discretizations. We consider an optimization-based positivity-preserving limiter for enforcing positivity of cell averages of DG solutions in a semi-implicit time discretization scheme, so that the point values can be easily enforced to be positive by a simple scaling limiter on the DG polynomial in each cell. The optimization can be efficiently solved by a first-order splitting method with nearly optimal parameters, which has an $\mathcal{O}(N)$ computational complexity and is flexible for parallel computation. Numerical tests are shown on some representative examples to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.