This book captures the state-of-the-art in the field of Strong Stability Preserving (SSP) time stepping methods, which have significant advantages for the time evolution of partial differential equations describing a wide range of physical phenomena. This comprehensive book describes the development of SSP methods, explains the types of problems which require the use of these methods and demonstrates the efficiency of these methods using a variety of numerical examples. Another valuable feature of this book is that it collects the most useful SSP methods, both explicit and implicit, and presents the other properties of these methods which make them desirable (such as low storage, small error coefficients, large linear stability domains). This book is valuable for both researchers studying the field of time-discretizations for PDEs, and the users of such methods.

Spectral methods are well-suited to solve problems modeled by time-dependent partial differential equations: they are fast, efficient and accurate and widely used by mathematicians and practitioners. This class-tested 2007 introduction, the first on the subject, is ideal for graduate courses, or self-study. The authors describe the basic theory of spectral methods, allowing the reader to understand the techniques through numerous examples as well as more rigorous developments. They provide a detailed treatment of methods based on Fourier expansions and orthogonal polynomials (including discussions of stability, boundary conditions, filtering, and the extension from the linear to the nonlinear situation). Computational solution techniques for integration in time are dealt with by Runge-Kutta type methods. Several chapters are devoted to material not previously covered in book form, including stability theory for polynomial methods, techniques for problems with discontinuous solutions, round-off errors and the formulation of spectral methods on general grids. These will be especially helpful for practitioners.