Superconvergence of Ultra-Weak Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for the Linear Schrödinger Equation in One Dimension

We analyze the superconvergence properties of ultra-weak discontinuous Galerkin (UWDG) methods with various choices of flux parameters for one-dimensional linear Schrödinger equation. In our previous work (Chen et al. in J Sci Comput 78(2):772–815, 2019), stability and optimal convergence rate are established for a large class of flux parameters. Depending on the flux choices and if the polynomial degree k is even or odd, in this paper, we prove 2 k or $$(2k-1)$$ ( 2 k - 1 ) th order superconvergence rate for cell averages and numerical flux of the function, as well as $$(2k-1)$$ ( 2 k - 1 ) or $$(2k-2)$$ ( 2 k - 2 ) th order for numerical flux of the derivative. In addition, we prove superconvergence of $$(k+2)$$ ( k + 2 ) or $$(k+3)$$ ( k + 3 ) th order of the DG solution towards a special projection. At a class of special points, the function values and the first and second order derivatives of the DG solution are superconvergent with order $$k+2, k+1, k$$ k + 2 , k + 1 , k , respectively. The proof relies on the correction function techniques initiated in Cao et al. (SIAM J Numer Anal 52(5):2555–2573, 2014), and applied to Cao et al. (Numer Methods Partial Differ Equ 33(1):290–317, 2017) for direct DG (DDG) methods for diffusion problems. Compared with Cao et al. (2017), Schrödinger equation poses unique challenges for superconvergence proof because of the lack of the dissipation mechanism from the equation. One major highlight of our proof is that we introduce specially chosen test functions in the error equation and show the superconvergence of the second derivative and jump across the cell interfaces of the difference between numerical solution and projected exact solution. This technique was originally proposed in Cheng and Shu (SIAM J Numer Anal 47(6):4044–4072, 2010) and is essential to elevate the convergence order for our analysis. Finally, by negative norm estimates, we apply the post-processing technique and show that the accuracy of our scheme can be enhanced to order 2 k . Theoretical results are verified by numerical experiments.