Preprint of the project: SFB 701: Spectral Structures and Topological Methods in Mathematics - Project B3

Numerical Analysis of equivariant evolution equations

16-039 Wolf-Jürgen Beyn, Denny Otten, Jens Rottmann-Matthes.
Freezing Traveling and Rotating Waves in Second Order Evolution Equations


In this paper we investigate the implementation of the so-called freezing method for second order wave equations in one and several space dimensions. The method converts the given PDE into a partial differential algebraic equation which is then solved numerically. The reformulation aims at separating the motion of a solution into a co-moving frame and a profile which varies as little as possible. Numerical examples demonstrate the feasability of this approach for semilinear wave equations with sufficient damping. We treat the case of a traveling wave in one space dimension and of a rotating wave in two space dimensions. In addition, we investigate in arbitrary space dimensions the point spectrum and the essential spectrum of operators obtained by linearizing about the profile, and we indicate the consequences for the nonlinear stability of the wave.