Constraint preserving discontinuous Galerkin method for ideal compressible MHD on 2-D Cartesian grids

Abstract

We propose a constraint preserving discontinuous Galerkin method for ideal compressible MHD in two dimensions and using Cartesian grids, which automatically maintains the global divergence-free property. The approximation of the magnetic field is achieved using Raviart-Thomas polynomials and the DG scheme is based on evolving certain moments of these polynomials which automatically guarantees divergence-free property. We also develop HLL-type multi-dimensional Riemann solvers to estimate the electric field at vertices which are consistent with the 1-D Riemann solvers. When limiters are used, the divergence-free property may be lost and it is recovered by a divergence-free reconstruction step. We show the performance of the method on a range of test cases up to fourth order of accuracy.