On order conditions for modified Patankar-Runge-Kutta schemes

In [6] the modified Patankar-Euler and modified Patankar-Runge-Kutta schemes were introduced to solve positive and conservative systems of ordinary differential equations. These modifications of the forward Euler scheme and Heun's method guarantee positivity and conservation irrespective of the chosen time step size. In this paper we introduce a general definition of modified Patankar-Runge-Kutta schemes and derive necessary and sufficient conditions to obtain first and second order methods. We also introduce two novel families of two-stage second order modified Patankar-Runge-Kutta schemes.