An adaptive multiresolution discontinuous galerkin method for time-dependent transport equations in multidimensions

In this paper, we develop an adaptive multiresolution discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme for time-dependent transport equations in multidimensions. The method is constructed using multiwavlelets on tensorized nested grids. Adaptivity is realized by error thresholding based on the hierarchical surplus, and the Runge–Kutta DG scheme is employed as the reference time evolution algorithm. We show that the scheme performs similarly to a sparse grid DG method when the solution is smooth, reducing computational cost in multidimensions. When the solution is no longer smooth, the adaptive algorithm can automatically capture fine local structures. The method is therefore very suitable for deterministic kinetic simulations. Numerical results including several benchmark tests, the Vlasov–Poisson (VP), and oscillatory VP systems are provided.