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For fixed finite matrices, the matrix exponential and a Taylor expansion showThis agrees through degree two with $e^{h(A+B)}$, even when $A$ and $B$ do not commute. On a fixed time interval, $\Vert S(h)\Vert \le e^{h(\Vert A\Vert +\Vert B\Vert )}$ and the telescoping identityturns the $O(h^3)$ one-step defect into $O(N{h}^3)=O(h^2)$ global error for $Nh\le T$. Hence Strang splitting is second order in general; for commuting matrices it is exact.

For the spatial discretization, use $d=2/(M+1)$, $x_m=-1+md$ and the interior vector $U=(u_1,\dots ,u_M{)}^T$, with $u_0=u_{M+1}=0$. The central finite differences giveHere $\mathrm{tridiag}$ lists lower diagonal, main diagonal and upper diagonal, in that order. Thus $A^T=A$ and $B^T=-B$. Discrete summation by parts givesThe matrix exponential $e^{hA/2}$ is consequently a contraction in the Euclidean norm, while $e^{hB}$ is an orthogonal matrix for real $\alpha$. ThereforeRepeated split steps are contractive in the mesh-weighted norm $d\sum |u_m{|}^2$, uniformly in the spatial mesh and without a Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy condition. The split semidiscretization is unconditionally stable. No commutativity or shared eigenvectors are needed for this Strang splitting contraction for symmetric diffusion and skew advection. Its time-order proof is for fixed spatial matrices; as $d\to 0$, commutators can grow, so this stability result alone is not a uniform-in-mesh second-order error estimate.