Order Conditions for Nonlinearly Partitioned Runge-Kutta Methods

Abstract: Recently a new class of nonlinearly partitioned Runge--Kutta (NPRK) methods was proposed for nonlinearly partitioned systems of autonomous ordinary differential equations, $y' = F(y,y)$. The target class of problems are ones in which different scales, stiffnesses, or physics are coupled in a nonlinear way, wherein the desired partition cannot be written in a classical additive or component-wise fashion. Here we use rooted-tree analysis to derive full order conditions for NPRK$_M$ methods, where $M$ denotes the number of nonlinear partitions. Due to the nonlinear coupling and thereby mixed product differentials, it turns out the standard node-colored rooted-tree analysis used in analyzing ODE integrators does not naturally apply. Instead we develop a new edge-colored rooted-tree framework to address the nonlinear coupling. The resulting order conditions are enumerated, provided directly for up to 4th order with $M=2$ and 3rd-order with $M=3$, and related to existing order conditions of additive and partitioned RK methods. We conclude with an example which shows how the nonlinear order conditions can be used to obtain an embedded estimate of the state-dependent nonlinear coupling strength in a dynamical system.