Stability of Explicit Symplectic Partitioned Runge-Kutta Methods

A numerical method for solving Hamiltonian equations is said to be symplectic if it preserves the symplectic structure associated with the equations. Various symplectic methods are widely used in many fields of science and technology. A symplectic method preserves an approximate Hamiltonian perturbed from the original Hamiltonian. It theoretically supports the effectiveness of symplectic methods for long-term integration. Although it is also related to long-term integration, numerical stability of symplectic methods have received little attention. In this paper, we consider explicit symplectic methods defined for Hamiltonian equations with Hamiltonians of the special form, and study their numerical stability using the harmonic oscillator as a test equation. We propose a new stability criterion and clarify the stability of some existing methods that are visually based on the criterion. We also derive a new method that is better than the existing methods with respect to a Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy condition for hyperbolic equations; this new method is tested through a numerical experiment with a nonlinear wave equation.