Smoothed Wigner transforms in the numerical simulation of semiclassical (high-frequency) wave propagation

Abstract

The numerical simulation of wave propagation in semiclassical (high-frequency) problems is well known to pose a formidable challenge. In this work, a new phase-space approach for the numerical simulation of semiclassical wave propagation, making use of the smoothed Wigner Transform (SWT), is proposed. There are numerous works which use the Wigner Transform (WT) in the study of a variety of wave propagation problems including high-frequency limits for linear, nonlinear and/or random waves. The WT however is well known to present significant difficulties in the formulation of numerical schemes. Working with concrete examples for the semiclassical linear Schrodinger equation it is seen that the SWT approach is indeed significantly faster (in a well-defined sense) to work with than the WT and than full numerical solutions of the original equation in the semiclassical regime. Comparisons with exact and numerical solutions are used to keep track of numerical errors.