Derivation of the multisymplectic Crank–Nicolson scheme for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation

The Crank–Nicolson scheme as well as its modified schemes is widely used in numerical simulations for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. In this paper, we prove the multisymplecticity and symplecticity of this scheme. Firstly, we reconstruct the scheme by the concatenating method and present the corresponding discrete multisymplectic conservation law. Based on the discrete variational principle, we derive a new variational integrator which is equivalent to the Crank–Nicolson scheme. Therefore, we prove the multisymplecticity again from the Lagrangian framework. Symplecticity comes from the proper discrete Hamiltonian structure and symplectic integration in time. We also analyze this scheme on stability and convergence including the discrete mass conservation law. Numerical experiments are presented to verify the efficiency and invariant-preserving property of this scheme. Comparisons with the multisymplectic Preissmann scheme are made to show the superiority of this scheme.