# Integrators¶

The integrators module contains some interator classes that can be used to integrate a solution forward in time. However, for now these integrators are only implemented for purely Fourier tensor product spaces. There are currently 3 different integrator classes

See, e.g., H. Montanelli and N. Bootland “Solving periodic semilinear PDEs in 1D, 2D and 3D with exponential integrators”, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.08900.pdf

Integrators are set up to solve equations like

(1)$\frac{\partial u}{\partial t} = L u + N(u)$

where $$u$$ is the solution, $$L$$ is a linear operator and $$N(u)$$ is the nonlinear part of the right hand side.

To illustrate, we consider the time-dependent 1-dimensional Kortveeg-de Vries equation

$\frac{\partial u}{\partial t} + \frac{\partial ^3 u}{\partial x^3} + u \frac{\partial u}{\partial x} = 0$

which can also be written as

$\frac{\partial u}{\partial t} + \frac{\partial ^3 u}{\partial x^3} + \frac{1}{2}\frac{\partial u^2}{\partial x} = 0$

We neglect boundary issues and choose a periodic domain $$[0, 2\pi]$$ with Fourier exponentials as test functions. The initial condition is chosen as

(2)$u(x, t=0) = 3 A^2/\cosh(0.5 A (x-\pi+2))^2 + 3B^2/\cosh(0.5B(x-\pi+1))^2$

where $$A$$ and $$B$$ are constants. For discretization in space we use the basis $$V_N = span\{exp(\imath k x)\}_{k=0}^N$$ and formulate the variational problem: find $$u \in V_N$$ such that

$\frac{\partial }{\partial t} \Big(u, v \Big) = -\Big(\frac{\partial^3 u }{\partial x^3}, v \Big) - \Big(\frac{1}{2}\frac{\partial u^2}{\partial x}, v\Big), \quad \forall v \in V_N$

We see that the first term on the right hand side is linear in $$u$$, whereas the second term is nonlinear. To implement this problem in shenfun we start by creating the necessary basis and test and trial functions

import numpy as np
from shenfun import *

N = 256
T = Basis(N, 'F', dtype='d')
u = TrialFunction(T)
v = TestFunction(T)
u_ = Array(T)
u_hat = Function(T)


We then create two functions representing the linear and nonlinear part of (1):

def LinearRHS(**params):
return -inner(Dx(u, 0, 3), v)

k = T.wavenumbers(scaled=True, eliminate_highest_freq=True)
def NonlinearRHS(u, u_hat, rhs, **params):
rhs.fill(0)
u_[:] = T.backward(u_hat, u_)
rhs = T.forward(-0.5*u_**2, rhs)
return rhs*1j*k   # return inner(grad(-0.5*Up**2), v)


Note that we differentiate in NonlinearRHS by using the wavenumbers k directly. Alternative notation, that is given in commented out text, is slightly slower, but the results are the same.

The solution vector u_ needs also to be initialized according to (2)

A = 25.
B = 16.
x = T.points_and_weights()[0]
u_[:] = 3*A**2/np.cosh(0.5*A*(x-np.pi+2))**2 + 3*B**2/np.cosh(0.5*B*(x-np.pi+1))**2
u_hat = T.forward(u_, u_hat)


Finally we create an instance of the ETDRK4 solver, and integrate forward with a given timestep

dt = 0.01/N**2
end_time = 0.006
integrator = ETDRK4(T, L=LinearRHS, N=NonlinearRHS)
integrator.setup(dt)
u_hat = integrator.solve(u_, u_hat, dt, (0, end_time))


The solution is two waves travelling through eachother, seemingly undisturbed.