SPLINE TECHNIQUES FOR SOLVING RELATIVISTIC CONSERVATION EQUATIONS

We discuss a new numerical method for solving the relativistic hydrodynamic equations based upon the basis-spline collocation approach. Analytical and numerical results are compared for several problems, including one-dimensional expansions and collisions for which analytical solutions exist. Our methods, which may be easily and massively parallelized, are shown to give numerical results which agree to within a few percent of the analytic solutions. We discuss the relevance of the v = z/t scaling solutions for the one-dimensional problem when applied to relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Finally, we discuss applications to three-dimensional problems, and present results for a typical three-dimensional expansion.