The specular ellipse method for scalar ordinary differential equations: exactness and accuracy up to fourth order

Abstract: This paper introduces a family of one-step implicit methods for solving scalar ordinary differential equations. At each step, the update uses a scaled angular mean of two vector-field evaluations, and the positive scale may vary from step to step. The leading terms of the local truncation error can be expressed in terms of the derivative of the signed curvature of the scaled solution graph. We prove that the proposed method reproduces the exact solution at the mesh points when the solution graph has constant signed curvature under a fixed positive scaling and each implicit update is unique. When this special geometric condition is not satisfied, we establish second-order consistency and convergence for positive scale sequences satisfying suitable uniform conditions. Furthermore, third- and fourth-order consistency and convergence can be achieved by choosing the scale to cancel the relevant curvature terms in the local truncation error. Using only the given problem data, we classify when these improvements are possible and determine the corresponding scale choices. An example shows that the proposed fourth-order method can yield smaller errors than the classical fourth-order Runge--Kutta method at the same step size.