An efficient shock-capturing central-type scheme for multidimensional relativistic flows

II. Magnetohydrodynamics

¹ Dipartimento di Astronomia e Scienza dello Spazio, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Largo E. Fermi 2, 50125 Firenze, Italy
² Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, Via C. Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy

Corresponding author: L. Del Zanna, ldz@arcetri.astro.it

Received: 20 September 2002
Accepted: 3 November 2002

Abstract

A third order shock-capturing numerical scheme for three-dimensional special relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (3-D RMHD) is presented and validated against several numerical tests. The simple and efficient central scheme described in Paper I (Del Zanna & Bucciantini [CITE]) for relativistic hydrodynamics is here extended to the magnetic case by following the strategies prescribed for classical MHD by Londrillo & Del Zanna ([CITE]). The scheme completely avoids spectral decomposition into characteristic waves, which is computationally expensive and subject to many degenerate cases in the magnetic case, while it makes use of a two-speed Riemann solver that just requires the knowledge of the two local fast magnetosonic velocities. Moreover, the onset of spurious magnetic monopoles, which is a typical problem for multi-dimensional MHD upwind codes, is prevented by properly taking into account the solenoidal constraint and the specific antisymmetric nature of the induction equation. Finally, the extension to generalized orthogonal curvilinear coordinate systems is included, thus the scheme is ready to incorporate general relativistic (GRMHD) effects.