Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2010
We discuss a novel strategy for computing the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the relativistic Dirac operator with a radially symmetric potential. The virtues of this strategy lie in the fact that it avoids completely the phenomenon of spectral pollution and it always provides two-sided estimates for the eigenvalues with explicit error bounds on both eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. We also discuss convergence rates of the method and illustrate our results with various numerical experiments.