An accurate and efficient local one-dimensional method for the 3D acoustic wave equation

We establish an accurate and efficient scheme with four-order accuracy for solving three-dimensional (3D) acoustic wave equation. First, the local one-dimensional method is used to transfer the 3D wave equation into three one-dimensional wave equations. Then, a new scheme is obtained by the Pade formulas for computation of spatial second derivatives and the correction of the truncation error remainder for discretization of temporal second derivative. It is compact and can be solved directly by the Thomas algorithm. Subsequently, the Fourier analysis method and the Lax equivalence theorem are employed to prove the stability and convergence of the present scheme, which shows that it is conditionally stable and convergent, and the stability condition is superior to that of most existing numerical methods of equivalent order of accuracy in the literature. It allows us to reduce computational cost with relatively large time step lengths. Finally, numerical examples have demonstrated high accuracy, stability, and efficiency of our method.