Feedback Integrators

Abstract

A new method is proposed to numerically integrate a dynamical system on a manifold such that the trajectory stably remains on the manifold and preserves the first integrals of the system. The idea is that given an initial point in the manifold we extend the dynamics from the manifold to its ambient Euclidean space and then modify the dynamics outside the intersection of the manifold and the level sets of the first integrals containing the initial point such that the intersection becomes a unique local attractor of the resultant dynamics. While the modified dynamics theoretically produces the same trajectory as the original dynamics, it yields a numerical trajectory that stably remains on the manifold and preserves the first integrals. The big merit of our method is that the modified dynamics can be integrated with any ordinary numerical integrator such as Euler or Runge-Kutta. We illustrate this method by applying it to three famous problems: the free rigid body, the Kepler problem and a perturbed Kepler problem with rotational symmetry. We also carry out simulation studies to demonstrate the excellence of our method and make comparisons with the standard projection method, a splitting method and Stormer-Verlet schemes.