A comparison of fourth-order operator splitting methods for cardiac simulations

Operator splitting methods constitute a powerful strategy to solve problems in the field of cardiac electrophysiology. In particular, it has been shown that operator splitting methods of order higher than two are more efficient than lower-order methods when solving problems involving simulations of the bidomain and monodomain models. An example of such problems is given by the Niederer problem, a well-defined benchmark in cardiac tissue electrophysiology. In this study, we present some fourth-order operator splitting methods, having real and complex coefficients, and compare their performance when applied to the Niederer benchmark as well as a variant with a stiffer cell model. (C) 2019 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.