A criterion for asymptotic preserving schemes of kinetic equations to be uniformly stationary preserving

Abstract

In this work we are interested in the stationary preserving property of asymptotic preserving (AP) schemes for kinetic models. We introduce a criterion for AP schemes for kinetic equations to be uniformly stationary preserving (SP). Our key observation is that as long as the Maxwellian of the distribution function can be updated explicitly, such AP schemes are also SP. To illustrate our observation, three different AP schemes for three different kinetic models are considered. Their SP property is proved analytically and tested numerically, which confirms our observations.