Evaluating Explicit Methods for Solving Astrophysical Nuclear Reaction Networks

Many systems of physical interest are difficult to manage computationally because of the intrinsic nature of the equations that govern them. Many of these systems of equations are stiff, meaning that the standard approach to solving them is with implicit methods, because explicit methods either are unstable or require timesteps too small to be computationally efficient. Presented here is a study of explicit methods that decouple stability from accuracy under certain conditions, allowing for larger timesteps to be taken.