A trigonometric method for the linear stochastic wave equation

Preprint, 2012

A fully discrete approximation of the linear stochastic wave equation driven by additive noise is presented. A standard finite element method is used for the spatial discretisation and a stochastic trigonometric scheme for the temporal approximation. This explicit time integrator allows for error bounds independent of the space discretisation and thus do not have a step size restriction as in the often used Störmer-Verlet-leap-frog scheme. Moreover it enjoys a trace formula as does the exact solution of our problem. These favourable properties are demonstrated with numerical experiments.