In this article,discrete variants of several results from vector calculus are studied for clas-sical finite difference summation by parts operators in two and three space dimensions.It is shown that existence theorems for scalar/vector potentials of irrotational/solenoidal vector fields cannot hold discretely because of grid oscillations,which are characterised explicitly.This results in a non-vanishing remainder associated with grid oscillations in the discrete Helmholtz Hodge decomposition.Nevertheless,iterative numerical methods based on an interpretation of the Helmholtz Hodge decomposition via orthogonal projections are pro-posed and applied successfully.In numerical experiments,the discrete remainder vanishes and the potentials converge with the same order of accuracy as usual in other first-order partial differential equations.Motivated by the successful application of the Helmholtz Hodge decomposition in theoretical plasma physics,applications to the discrete analysis of magnetohydrodynamic(MHD)wave modes are presented and discussed.
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