Comparison of exponential and implicit time integrators for unsteady advection-diffusion problems on refined meshes

Time integration of advection dominated advection-diffusion problems on refined meshes can be a challenging task, since local refinement can lead to a severe time step restriction, whereas standard implicit time stepping is usually hardly suitable for treating advection terms. We show that exponential time integrators can be an efficient, yet conceptually simple, option in this case. Our comparison includes three exponential integrators and one conventional scheme, the two-stage Rosenbrock method ROS2 which has been a popular alternative to splitting methods for solving advection–diffusion problems.