Round-off Error Analysis of Explicit One-Step Numerical Integration Methods
Sylvie Boldo, Florian Faissole, Alexandre Chapoutot · 2017
Ordinary differential equations are ubiquitous in scientific computing. Solving exactly these equations is usually not possible, except for special cases, hence the use of numerical schemes to get a discretized solution. We are interested in such numerical integration methods, for instance Euler's method or the Runge-Kutta methods. As they are implemented using floating-point arithmetic, round-off errors occur. In order to guarantee their accuracy, we aim at providing bounds on the round-off errors of explicit one-step numerical integration methods. Our methodology is to apply a fine-grained analysis to these numerical algorithms. Our originality is that our floating-point analysis takes advantage of the linear stability of the scheme, a mathematical property that vouches the scheme is well-behaved.