Some remarks on discrete and semi-discrete transparent boundary conditions for solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation on the half-axis

Abstract

We consider the generalized time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation on the half-axis and a broad family of finite-difference schemes with the discrete transparent boundary conditions (TBCs) to solve it. We first rewrite the discrete TBCs in a simplified form explicit in space step $h$. Next, for a selected scheme of the family, we discover that the discrete convolution in time in the discrete TBC does not depend on $h$ and, moreover, it coincides with the corresponding convolution in the semi-discrete TBC rewritten similarly. This allows us to prove the bound for the difference between the kernels of the discrete convolutions in the discrete and semi-discrete TBCs (for the first time). Numerical experiments on replacing the discrete TBC convolutions by the semi-discrete one exhibit truly small absolute errors though not relative ones in general. The suitable discretization in space of the semi-discrete TBC for the higher-order Numerov scheme is also discussed.