Stability of Runge-Kutta methods for stiff ordinary differential equations

Abstract: This work analyzes the integration of initial value problems for stiff systems of ordinary differential equations by Runge-Kutta methods. We use the characterization of stiff initial value problems due to Kreiss: the Jacobian matrix is essentially negative dominant and satisfies a relative Lipschitz condition. We establish the existence and regularity of the numerical solution, and give conditions under which the Runge-Kutta formula is stable.

Available by anonymous ftp from ftp.math.iastate.edu in the directory pub/alex/preprints/rks