Finite difference WENO schemes have established themselves as very worthy performers for entire classes of applications that involve hyperbolic conservation laws. In this paper we report on two major advances that make finite difference WENO schemes more efficient. The first advance consists of realizing that WENO schemes require us to carry out stencil operations very efficiently. In this paper we show that the reconstructed polynomials for any one-dimensional stencil can be expressed most efficiently and economically in Legendre polynomials. By using Legendre basis, we show that the reconstruction polynomials and their corresponding smoothness indicators can be written very compactly. The smoothness indicators are written as a sum of perfect squares. Since this is a computationally expensive step, the efficiency of finite difference WENO schemes is enhanced by the innovation which is reported here. The second advance consists of realizing that one can make a non-linear hybridization between a large, centered, very high accuracy stencil and a lower order WENO scheme that is nevertheless very stable and capable of capturing physically meaningful extrema. This yields a class of adaptive order WENO schemes, which we call WENO-AO (for adaptive order). Thus we arrive at a WENO-AO(5,3) scheme that is at best fifth order accurate by virtue of its centered stencil with five zones and at worst third order accurate by virtue of being non-linearly hybridized with an r=3 CWENO scheme. The process can be extended to arrive at a WENO-AO(7,3) scheme that is at best seventh order accurate by virtue of its centered stencil with seven zones and at worst third order

In various astrophysics settings it is common to have a two-fluid relativistic plasma that interacts with the electromagnetic field. While it is common to ignore the displacement current in the ideal, classical magnetohydrodynamic limit, when the flows become relativistic this approximation is less than absolutely well-justified. In such a situation, it is more natural to consider a positively charged fluid made up of positrons or protons interacting with a negatively charged fluid made up of electrons. The two fluids interact collectively with the full set of Maxwell's equations. As a result, a solution strategy for that coupled system of equations is sought and found here. Our strategy extends to higher orders, providing increasing accuracy.The primary variables in the Maxwell solver are taken to be the facially-collocated components of the electric and magnetic fields. Consistent with such a collocation, three important innovations are reported here. The first two pertain to the Maxwell solver. In our first innovation, the magnetic field within each zone is reconstructed in a divergence-free fashion while the electric field within each zone is reconstructed in a form that is consistent with Gauss' law. In our second innovation, a multidimensionally upwinded strategy is presented which ensures that the magnetic field can be updated via a discrete interpretation of Faraday's law and the electric field can be updated via a discrete interpretation of the generalized Ampere's law.

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