Abstract. In this paper, we develop a new discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element method for solving time dependent partial differential equations (PDEs) with higher order spatial derivatives. Unlike the traditional local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method, the method in this paper can be applied without introducing any auxiliary variables or rewriting the original equation into a larger system. Stability is ensured by a careful choice of interface numerical fluxes. The method can be designed for quite general nonlinear PDEs and we prove stability and give error estimates for a few representative classes of PDEs up to fifth order. Numerical examples show that our scheme attains the optimal (k + 1)-th order of accuracy when using piecewise k-th degree polynomials, under the condition that k + 1 is greater than or equal to the order of the equation.

In this paper, we study the superconvergence property for the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) and the local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) methods, for solving one-dimensional time dependent linear conservation laws and convection-diffusion equations. We prove superconvergence towards a particular projection of the exact solution when the upwind flux is used for conservation laws and when the alternating flux is used for convection-diffusion equations. The order of superconvergence for both cases is proved to be k + 3 2 when piecewise P k polynomials with k ≥ 1 are used. The proof is valid for arbitrary non-uniform regular meshes and for piecewise P k polynomials with arbitrary k ≥ 1, improving upon the results in [8, 9] in which the proof based on Fourier analysis was given only for uniform meshes with periodic boundary condition and piecewise P 1 polynomials.

Abstract. Discontinuous Galerkin methods are developed for solving the Vlasov-Maxwell system, methods that are designed to be systematically as accurate as one wants with provable conservation of mass and possibly total energy. Such properties in general are hard to achieve within other numerical method frameworks for simulating the Vlasov-Maxwell system. The proposed scheme employs discontinuous Galerkin discretizations for both the Vlasov and the Maxwell equations, resulting in a consistent description of the distribution function and electromagnetic fields. It is proven, up to some boundary effects, that charge is conserved and the total energy can be preserved with suitable choices of the numerical flux for the Maxwell equations and the underlying approximation spaces. Error estimates are established for several flux choices. The scheme is tested on the streaming Weibel instability: the order of accuracy and conservation properties of the proposed method are verified.