Abstract
When evolving in time the solution of a hyperbolic partial differential equation, it is often desirable to use high order strong stability preserving (SSP) time discretizations. These time discretizations preserve the monotonicity properties satisfied by the spatial discretization when coupled with the first order forward Euler, under a certain time-step restriction. While the allowable time-step depends on both the spatial and temporal discretizations, the contribution of the temporal discretization can be isolated by taking the ratio of the allowable time-step of the high order method to the forward Euler time-step. This ratio is called the strong stability coefficient. The search for high order strong stability time-stepping methods with high order and large allowable time-step had been an active area of research. It is known that explicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods exist up to fourth order and implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods exist only up to sixth order. However, if we restrict ourselves to solving only linear autonomous problems, the order conditions simplify and we can find implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods of any linear order. In the current work we formulate an optimization problem for implicit-explicit (IMEX) SSP Runge-Kutta methods and find implicit methods with large linear stability regions that pair with known explicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods of orders Plin = 3, 4, 6. Additionally optimized IMEX SSP Runge-Kutta pairs that have high linear order and nonlinear orders p = 2, 3, 4 are also developed. These methods are then tested on sample problems to verify order of convergence and to demonstrate the sharpness of the SSP coefficient and the typical behavior of these methods.