MATHICSE technical Report : Stabilized explicit multirate methods for stiff differential equations

Stabilized Runge–Kutta (aka Chebyshev) methods are especially efficient for the numerical solution of large systems of stiff differential equations because they are fully explicit; hence, they are inherently parallel and easily accommodate nonlinearity. For semi-discrete parabolic (or diffusion dominated) problems, for instance, stabilized Runge–Kutta methods overcome the stringent stability condition of standard methods without sacrificing explicitness. However, when much of the stiffness is only induced by a few components, as in the presence of spatially local mesh refinement, their efficiency deteriorates. To remove the crippling effect of a few severely stiff components on the entire system of differential equations, we derive a modified equation, whose stiffness solely depend on the remaining mildly stiff components. By applying stabilized Runge–Kutta methods to this modified equation, we then devise an explicit multirate Runge–Kutta–Chebyshev (mRKC) method whose stability conditions are independent of a few severely stiff components. Stability of the mRKC method is proved for a model problem, whereas its efficiency and usefulness are demonstrated through a series of numerical experiments.