In this paper, we develop a set of efficient methods to compute stationary states of the spherical Landau-Brazovskii (LB) model in a discretization-then-optimization way. First, we discretize the spherical LB energy functional into a finite-dimensional energy function by the spherical harmonic expansion. Then five optimization methods are developed to compute stationary states of the discretized energy function, including the accelerated adaptive Bregman proximal gradient, Nesterov, adaptive Nesterov, adaptive nonlinear conjugate gradient and adaptive gradient descent methods. To speed up the convergence, we propose a principal mode analysis (PMA) method to estimate good initial configurations and sphere radius. The PMA method also reveals the relationship between the optimal sphere radius and the dominant degree of spherical harmonics. Numerical experiments show that our approaches significantly reduce the number of iterations and the computational time.

Using newly developed $\mathbf{H}$(${\rm curl}^2$) conforming elements, we solve the Maxwell’s transmission eigenvalue problem. Both real and complex eigenvalues are considered. Based on the fixed-point weak formulation with reasonable assumptions, the optimal error estimates for numerical eigenvalues and eigenfunctions (in the $\mathbf{H}$(${\rm curl}^2$)-norm and $\mathbf{H}{\rm (curl)}$-semi-norm) are established. Numerical experiments are performed to verify the theoretical assumptions and confirm our theoretical analysis.

In this paper, we present the Gauss’s law-preserving spectral methods and their efficient solution algorithms for curl-curl source and eigenvalue problems arising from Maxwell’s equations. Arbitrary order $\mathbf{H}{\rm (curl)}$-conforming spectral basis functions in two and three dimensions are firstly proposed using compact combination of Legendre polynomials. A mixed formulation involving a Lagrange multiplier is then adopted to preserve the Gauss’s law in the weak sense. To overcome the bottleneck of computational efficiency caused by the saddle-point nature of the mixed scheme, we present highly efficient algorithms based on reordering and decoupling of the linear system and numerical eigen-decomposition of 1D mass matrix. The proposed solution algorithms are direct methods requiring only several matrix-matrix or matrix-tensor products of $N$-by-$N$ matrices, where $N$ is the highest polynomial order in each direction. Compared with other direct methods, the computational complexities are reduced from $\mathcal{O}(N^6)$ and $\mathcal{O}(N^9)$ to $\mathcal{O}(N^{log_2 7})$ and $\mathcal{O}(N^{1+log_2 7})$ with small and constant pre-factors for 2D and 3D cases, respectively. Moreover, these algorithms strictly obey the Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition, thus totally eliminate the spurious eigen-modes of non-physical zero eigenvalues for convex domains. Ample numerical examples for solving Maxwell’s source and eigenvalue problems are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed methods.

A two-layer dual strategy is proposed in this work to construct a new family of high-order finite volume element (FVE-2L) schemes that can avoid main common drawbacks of the existing high-order finite volume element (FVE) schemes. The existing high-order FVE schemes are complicated to construct since the number of the dual elements in each primary element used in their construction increases with a rate $\mathcal{O}((k+1)^2),$ where $k$ is the order of the scheme. Moreover, all $k$-th-order FVE schemes require a higher regularity $H^{k+2}$ than the approximation theory for the $L^2$ theory. Furthermore, all FVE schemes lose local conservation properties over boundary dual elements when dealing with Dirichlet boundary conditions. The proposed FVE-2L schemes has a much simpler construction since they have a fixed number (four) of dual elements in each primary element. They also reduce the regularity requirement for the $L^2$ theory to $H^{k+1}$ and preserve the local conservation law on all dual elements of the second dual layer for both flux and equation forms. Their stability and $H^1$ and $L^2$ convergence are proved. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the convergence and conservation properties of the FVE-2L schemes. Moreover, the condition number of the stiffness matrix of the FVE-2L schemes for the Laplacian operator is shown to have the same growth rate as those for the existing FVE and finite element schemes.

The linear stabilization approach is well-known for facilitating the use of large time steps in solving gradient flows while maintaining stability. However, the up-to-date analysis of energy stability relies on either a global Lipschitz nonlinearity or an $ℓ^∞$ bound assumption of numerical solutions. Considering the Swift-Hohenberg equation that lacks a global Lipschitz nonlinearity, we develop a unified framework to analyze the energy stability and characterize the stabilization size for a class of single-step schemes employing spatial Fourier pseudo-spectral discretization. First, assuming that all stage solutions are bounded in the $ℓ^∞$ norm, we illustrate that the energy obtained from a single-step scheme with non-negative energy-stability-preserving coefficient is unconditionally dissipative, as long as a sufficiently large stabilization parameter is employed. To justify the $ℓ^∞$ bound assumption of solutions, we use the third-order exponential-time-differencing Runge-Kutta scheme as a case study to establish a uniform-in-time discrete $H^2$ bound for stage solutions under an $\mathcal{O}(1)$ time step constraint. This leads to a uniform $ℓ^∞$ bound of stage solutions through discrete Sobolev embedding. Consequently, we achieve a stabilization parameter of $\mathcal{O}(1),$ which is independent of the time step, thereby ensuring the energy stability. The global-in-time energy stability analysis and characterization of the stabilization parameter represent significant advancements for general single-step schemes applied to a gradient flow without the global Lipschitz continuity.

The time-space nonlocal evolution equations are powerful implementation for modeling anomalous diffusion. In this research, we study the nonlocal nonautonomous reaction-diffusion equation

where $\chi$ is a Lusin space, $∂^w_t$ is a generalized time fractional derivative, $κ$ is a bounded reaction rate, and $\mathcal{L}$ is an infinitesimal generator in terms of semigroup induced by a symmetric Markov process $X.$ We show that the stochastic representation $u(t,x)$ defined by

is the unique mild as well as weak solution. By further analysis, one can get that the above stochastic representation is also the unique strong solution, and the higher spatial and temporal regularity are obtained. In some particular cases, the corresponding dynamical behaviors are displayed.

Saddle points largely exist in complex systems and play important roles in various scientific problems. High-index saddle dynamics (HiSD) is an efficient method for computing any-index saddle points and constructing solution landscape. In this paper, we propose a two-step Adams explicit scheme for HiSD and analyze its error estimate versus time step. Through careful argumentation and overcoming the difficulties caused by nonlinear coupling and orthogonalisation, we prove that the two-step Adams explicit scheme has second-order accuracy. The theoretical results are further verified by two numerical experiments.