Unconditionally optimal convergence of an energy-conserving and linearly implicit scheme for nonlinear wave equations

In this paper, we present and analyze an energy-conserving and linearly implicit scheme for solving the nonlinear wave equations. Optimal error estimates in time and superconvergent error estimates in space are established without time-step dependent on the spatial mesh size. The key is to estimate directly the solution bounds in the $H^2$-norm for both the nonlinear wave equation and the corresponding fully discrete scheme, while the previous investigations rely on the temporal-spatial error splitting approach. Numerical examples are presented to confirm energy-conserving properties, unconditional convergence, and optimal error estimates, respectively, of the proposed fully discrete schemes.