Fully discrete backward error analysis for the midpoint rule applied to the nonlinear Schroedinger equation

Abstract

The use of symplectic numerical schemes on Hamiltonian systems is widely known to lead to favorable long-time behaviour. While this phenomenon is thoroughly understood in the context of finite-dimensional Hamiltonian systems, much less is known in the context of Hamiltonian PDEs. In this work we provide the first dimension-independent backward error analysis for a Runge-Kutta-type method, the midpoint rule, which shows the existence of a modified energy for this method when applied to nonlinear Schroedinger equations regardless of the level of spatial discretisation. We use this to establish long-time stability of the numerical flow for the midpoint rule.