A symplectic Runge–Kutta–Nyström method with minimal phase-lag

In this Letter we introduce a symplectic explicit RKN method for Hamiltonian systems with periodical solutions. The method has algebraic order three and phase-lag order six at a cost of three function evaluations per step. Numerical experiments show the relevance of the developed algorithm. It is found that the new method is much more efficient than the standard symplectic fourth-order method [M.P. Calvo, J.M. Sanz-Serna, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 14 (1993) 936].