Variational Formulations for Explicit Runge-Kutta Methods

Variational space-time formulations for Partial Differential Equations have been of great interest in the last decades. While it is known that implicit time marching schemes have variational structure, the Galerkin formulation of explicit methods in time remains elusive. In this work, we prove that the explicit Runge-Kutta methods can be expressed as discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin methods both in space and time. We build trial and test spaces for the linear diffusion equation that lead to one, two, and general stage explicit Runge-Kutta methods. This approach enables us to design explicit time-domain (goal-oriented) adaptive algorithms