A Space-Time Continuous Galerkin Finite Element Method for Linear Schrödinger Equations

We introduce a space-time finite element method for the linear time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation with Dirichlet conditions in a bounded Lipschitz domain. The proposed discretization scheme is based on a space-time variational formulation of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation. In particular, the space-time method is conforming and is of Galerkin-type, i.e., trial and test spaces are equal. We consider a tensor-product approach with respect to time and space, using piecewise polynomial, continuous trial and test functions. In this case, we state the global linear system and efficient direct space-time solvers based on exploiting the Kronecker structure of the global system matrix. This leads to the Bartels-Stewart method and the fast diagonalization method. Both methods result in solving a sequence of spatial subproblems. In particular, the fast diagonalization method allows for solving the spatial subproblems in parallel, i.e., a time parallelization is possible. Numerical examples for a two-dimensional spatial domain illustrate convergence in space-time norms and show the potential of the proposed solvers.