Time-Symmetric ADI and Causal Reconnection: Stable Numerical Techniques for Hyperbolic Systems on Moving Grids

Abstract

Moving grids are of interest in the numerical solution of hydrodynamical problems and in numerical relativity. We show that conventional integration methods for the simple wave equation in one and more than one dimension exhibit a number of instabilities on moving grids. We introduce two techniques, which we call causal reconnection and time-symmetric ADI, which together allow integration of the wave equation with absolute local stability in any number of dimensions on grids that may move very much faster than the wave speed and that can even accelerate. These methods allow very long time-steps, are fully second-order accurate, and offer the computational efficiency of operator-splitting.