A second-order low-regularity correction of Lie splitting for the semilinear Klein--Gordon equation

Abstract: The numerical approximation of the semilinear Klein--Gordon equation in the $d$-dimensional space, with $d=1,2,3$, is studied by analyzing the consistency errors in approximating the solution. By discovering and utilizing a new cancellation structure in the semilinear Klein--Gordon equation, a low-regularity correction of the Lie splitting method is constructed, which can have second-order convergence in the energy space under the regularity condition $(u,\partial_tu)\in L^\infty(0,T;H^{1+\frac{d}{4}}\times H^{\frac{d}{4}})$, where $d=1,2,3$ denotes the dimension of space. In one dimension, the proposed method is shown to have a convergence order arbitrarily close to $\frac53$ in the energy space for solutions in the same space, i.e. no additional regularity in the solution is required. Rigorous error estimates are presented for a fully discrete spectral method with the proposed low-regularity time-stepping scheme. Numerical examples are provided to support the theoretical analysis and to illustrate the performance of the proposed method in approximating both nonsmooth and smooth solutions of the semilinear Klein--Gordon equation.