Energy-preserving continuous-stage Runge-Kutta-Nyström methods

Abstract: Many practical problems can be described by second-order system $\ddot{q}=-M\nabla U(q)$, in which people give special emphasis to some invariants with explicit physical meaning, such as energy, momentum, angular momentum, etc. However, conventional numerical integrators for such systems will fail to preserve any of these quantities which may lead to qualitatively incorrect numerical solutions. This paper is concerned with the development of energy-preserving continuous-stage Runge-Kutta-Nystr\"om (csRKN) methods for solving second-order systems. Sufficient conditions for csRKN methods to be energy-preserving are presented and it is proved that all the energy-preserving csRKN methods satisfying these sufficient conditions can be essentially induced by energy-preserving continuous-stage partitioned Runge-Kutta methods. Some illustrative examples are given and relevant numerical results are reported.