We discuss the multi-configurationtime-dependent Hartree (MCTDH) method for the approximation of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in quantum molecular dynamics. This method approximates the high-dimensional nuclearwave function by a linear combination of products of functions dependingonly on a single degree of freedom. The equations of motion, obtained via the Dirac-Frenkel time-dependent variational principle, consist of a coupled system of low-dimensionalnonlinear partial differential equations and ordinary differential equations. We show that, with a smooth and bounded potential, the MCTDH equations are well-posed and retain high-order Sobolev regularity globally in time, that is,as long as the density matrices appearing in the method formulation remain invertible. In particular, the solutions are regular enough to ensure local quasi-optimality of the approximation and to admit an efficient numerical treatment.

We explain why the conventional argument for deriving the time-dependent Born-Oppenheimer approximation is incomplete and review recent mathematical results, which clarify the situation and at the same time provide a systematic scheme for higher order corrections. We also present a new elementary derivation of the correct second-order time-dependent Born-Oppenheimer approximation and discuss as applicationsthe dynamics near a conical intersection of potential surfaces and reactive scattering.

We consider higher order mixed finite element methods for the incompressible Stokes or Navier-Stokes equations with Q r -elements for the velocity anddiscontinuous $P_{r-1}$ -elements for the pressure where the orderr can vary from element to elementbetween 2 and a fixed bound $r^*$ .We prove the inf-sup condition uniformly with respect to the meshwidth hon general quadrilateral and hexahedral meshes with hanging nodes.

A continuous finite element method to approximate Friedrichs' systems isproposed and analyzed. Stability is achieved by penalizing the jumpsacross meshinterfaces of the normal derivative of some components of the discrete solution. The convergence analysis leads to optimal convergence ratesin the graph norm and suboptimal of order ½ convergence rates inthe L 2-norm. A variant of the method specialized toFriedrichs' systems associated with elliptic PDE's in mixed form andreducing the number of nonzero entries in the stiffness matrix is alsoproposed and analyzed. Finally, numerical results are presented to illustrate thetheoretical analysis.

Based on estimates for the KdV equation in analyticGevrey classes, a spectral collocation approximation ofthe KdV equation is proved to converge exponentially fast.

In this work, we consider singular perturbations of the boundary of a smooth domain. We describe the asymptotic behavior of the solution uE of a second order elliptic equation posed in the perturbed domain with respect to the size parameter ε of the deformation. We are also interested in the variations of the energy functional. We propose a numerical method for the approximation of uE based on a multiscale superposition of the unperturbed solution u 0 and a profile defined in a model domain. We conclude with numerical results.

Many numerical simulations in (bilinear) quantum control use the monotonically convergent Krotov algorithms (introduced byTannor et al. [Time Dependent Quantum Molecular Dynamics (1992) 347–360]), Zhu and Rabitz [J. Chem. Phys. (1998) 385–391] or theirunified form described in Maday and Turinici [J. Chem. Phys. (2003) 8191–8196]. InMaday et al. [Num. Math. (2006) 323–338], a time discretization which preserves theproperty of monotonicity has been presented. This paper introduces aproof of the convergence of these schemes and some results regarding theirrate of convergence.

This paper addresses the derivation of new second-kind Fredholm combined field integral equations for the Krylov iterative solution of tridimensional acoustic scattering problems by a smooth closed surface. These integralequations need the introduction of suitable tangential square-root operators to regularize the formulations. Existence and uniqueness occur for these formulations. They can be interpreted asgeneralizations of the well-known Brakhage-Werner [A. Brakhage and P. Werner, Arch. Math.16 (1965) 325–329] and Combined Field Integral Equations (CFIE) [R.F. Harrington and J.R. Mautz, Arch. Elektron. Übertragungstech (AEÜ)32 (1978) 157–164].Finally, some numerical experiments are performed to test their efficiency.

The present paper proposes and analyzes a general locking free mixed strategy for computing the deformation of incompressible three dimensional structures placed inside flexible membranes. The model involves as in Chapelle and Ferent [Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci.13 (2003) 573–595] a bending dominated shell envelope and a quasi incompressible elastic body. The present work extends an earlier work ofArnold and Brezzi [Math Comp.66 (1997) 1–14] treating the shell part and proposes a global stable finite element approximation by coupling optimal mixed finite element formulations of the different subproblems by mortar techniques. Examples of adequate finite elements are proposed. Convergence results are derived in two steps. First a global inf-sup condition is proved, deducedfrom the local conditions to be satisfied by the finite elements used for the external shell problem, the internal incompressible 3D problem, and the mortar coupling, respectively. Second, the analysis ofArnold and Brezzi [Math. Comp.66 (1997) 1–14] is extended to the present problem and least to convergence results for the full coupled problem, withconstants independent of the problem's small parameters.

This paper is concerned with the numerical approximation of Cauchy problems for one-dimensional nonconservative hyperbolic systems. The theory developed by Dal Maso et al. [J. Math. Pures Appl.74 (1995) 483–548] is used in order to define the weak solutions of the system: an interpretation of the nonconservative products as Borel measures is given, based on the choice of a family of paths drawn in the phase space. Even if the family of paths can be chosen arbitrarily, it is natural to require this family to satisfy some hypotheses concerning the relation of the paths with the integral curves of the characteristic fields. The first goal of this paper is to investigate the implications of three basic hypotheses of this nature. Next, we show that, when the family of paths satisfies these hypotheses, Godunov methods can be written in a natural form that generalizes their classical expression for systems of conservation laws. We also study the well-balance properties of these methods. Finally, we provethe consistency of the numerical scheme with the definition of weak solutions: we prove that, under hypothesis of bounded total variation, if the approximations provided by a Godunov method based on a family of paths converge uniformly to some function as the mesh is refined, then this function is a weak solution (related to that family of paths) of the nonconservative system. We extend this result to a family of numerical schemes based on approximate Riemann solvers.


We propose and study some new additive, two-level non-overlapping Schwarz preconditioners for the solution of the algebraic linear systems arising from a wide class of discontinuous Galerkin approximations of elliptic problems that have been proposed up to now. In particular, two-level methods for both symmetric and non-symmetric schemes are introduced and some interesting features, which have no analog in the conforming case, are discussed.Both the construction and analysis of the proposed domain decomposition methods are presented in a unified framework. For symmetric schemes, it is shown that the condition number of the preconditioned system is of order O(H/h), where H and h are the mesh sizes of the coarse and fine grids respectively, which are assumed to be nested. For non-symmetric schemes, we show by numerical computations that the Eisenstat et al. [SIAM J. Numer. Anal.20 (1983) 345–357] GMRES convergence theory, generally used in the analysis of Schwarz methods for non-symmetric problems, cannot be applied even if the numerical results show that the GMRES applied to the preconditioned systems converges in a finite number of steps and the proposed preconditioners seem to be scalable.Extensive numerical experiments to validate our theory and to illustrate the performance and robustness of the proposed two-level methods are presented.


We construct finite volume schemes, on unstructured and irregular grids andin any space dimension, for non-linear elliptic equations of the p-Laplacian kind: -div(|∇u|p-2 ∇u) = ƒ(with 1 < p < ∞). We prove the existence and uniqueness of the approximate solutions,as well as their strong convergence towards the solution of the PDE.The outcome of some numerical tests are also provided.

In this paper, we study a Zakharov system coupled to an electrondiffusion equation in order to describe laser-plasma interactions. Starting fromthe Vlasov-Maxwell system, we derive a nonlinear Schrödinger like system which takes into account the energy exchanged between the plasma waves and the electrons via Landau damping. Two existence theorems are established in a subsonic regime. Using a time-splitting, spectral discretizations for the Zakharov system and a finite difference scheme for the electron diffusion equation, we perform numerical simulations and show how Landau damping works quantitatively.

We study the existence of spatial periodic solutions for nonlinearelliptic equations $- \Delta u \, + \, g(x,u(x)) = 0, \;x \in {\mathbb R}^N$ where g is a continuous function, nondecreasing w.r.t. u. Wegive necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence ofperiodic solutions. Some cases with nonincreasing functions gare investigated as well. As an application we analyze themathematical model of electron beam focusing system and we provethe existence of positive periodic solutions for the envelopeequation. We present also numerical simulations.

In this paper, by use of affine biquadratic elements, we constructand analyze a finite volume element scheme for elliptic equations onquadrilateral meshes. The scheme is shown to be of second-order inH 1-norm, provided that each quadrilateral in partition is almosta parallelogram. Numerical experiments are presented to confirm theusefulness and efficiency of the method.

In this work we derive a posteriori error estimates basedon equations residuals for the heat equation with discontinuousdiffusivity coefficients. The estimates are based on a fully discretescheme based on conforming finite elements in each time slab andon the A-stable θ-scheme with 1/2 ≤ θ ≤ 1.Following remarks of [Picasso, Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 167 (1998) 223–237; Verfürth, Calcolo40 (2003) 195–212] it is easyto identify a time-discretization error-estimatorand a space-discretization error-estimator. In this work we introduce a similarsplitting for the data-approximation error in time and in space. Assuming the quasi-monotonicity condition [Dryja et al., Numer. Math.72 (1996) 313–348; Petzoldt, Adv. Comput. Math.16 (2002) 47–75] we have upper and lower boundswhose ratio is independent of any meshsize, timestep, problem parameter and its jumps.

An algorithm for approximation of an unsteady fluid-structure interaction problem isproposed. The fluid is governed by the Navier-Stokes equations with boundary conditionson pressure, while for the structure a particular plate model is used. The algorithm is based on the modal decomposition and the Newmark Method for the structure and on the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian coordinates and the Finite Element Method for the fluid.In this paper, the continuity of the stresses at the interface was treated by theLeast Squares Method. At each time step we have to solve an optimization problemwhich permits us to use moderate time step. This is the main advantage of this approach. In order to solve the optimization problem, we have employed the Broyden, Fletcher, Goldforb, Shano Method wherethe gradient of the cost function was approached by the Finite Difference Method.Numerical results are presented.