Symplectic and multi-symplectic methods for coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with periodic solutions

We consider for the integration of coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with periodic plane wave solutions a splitting method from the class of symplectic integrators and the multi-symplectic six-point scheme which is equivalent to the Preissman scheme. The numerical experiments show that both methods preserve very well the mass, energy and momentum in long-time evolution. The local errors in the energy are computed according to the discretizations in time and space for both methods. Due to its local nature, the multi-symplectic six-point scheme preserves the local invariants more accurately than the symplectic splitting method, but the global errors for conservation laws are almost the same. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 02.70.Bf; 42.65.Sf