A Discrete Algorithm for General Weakly Hyperbolic Systems

This paper studies the Cauchy problem for variable coefficient weakly hyperbolic first order systems of partial differential operators. The hyperbolicity assumption is that for each $t,x$ the principal symbol is hyperbolic. No hypothesis is imposed on lower order terms. For coefficients and Cauchy data sufficiently Gevrey regular the Cauchy problem has a unique sufficiently Gevrey regular solution. We prove stability and error estimates for the spectral Crank-Nicholson scheme. Approximate solutions can be computed with accuracy $epsilon$ in the supremum norm with cost growing at most polynomially in $epsilo{n}^{-1}$. The proofs use the symmetrizers from [2].