KADATH: A spectral solver for theoretical physics

  • Authors:
  • Philippe Grandclément

  • Affiliations:
  • Laboratoire de l'Univers et Théories LUTH, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, 5 Place J. Janssen, 91195 Meudon Cedex, France

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computational Physics
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

KADATH is a library that implements spectral methods in a very modular manner. It is designed to solve a wide class of problems that arise in the context of theoretical physics. Several types of coordinates are implemented and additional geometries can be easily encoded. Partial differential equations of various types are discretized by means of spectral methods. The resulting system is solved using a Newton-Raphson iteration. Doing so, KADATH is able to deal with strongly non-linear situations. The algorithms are validated by applying the library to four different problems of contemporary physics, in the fields of gauge field theory and general relativity.