Increasing efficiency through optimal RK time integration of diffusion equations

The application of Runge-Kutta schemes designed to enjoy a large region of absolute stability can significantly increase the efficiency of numerical methods for PDEs based on a method of lines approach. In this work we investigate the improvement in the efficiency of the time integration of relaxation schemes for degenerate diffusion problems, using SSP Runge-Kutta schemes and computing the maximal CFL coefficients. This technique can be extended to other PDEs, linear and nonlinear, provided the space operator has eigenvalues with a non-zero real part.