A remark on the invariant energy quadratization (IEQ) method for preserving the original energy dissipation laws

In this letter, we revisit the invariant energy quadratization (IEQ) method and provide a new perspective on its ability to preserve the original energy dissipation laws. The IEQ method has been widely used to design energy stable numerical schemes for phase-field or gradient flow models. Although there are many merits of the IEQ method, one major disadvantage is that the IEQ method usually respects a modified energy law, where the modified energy is expressed in the auxiliary variables. Still, the dissipation laws in terms of the original energy are not guaranteed by the IEQ method. Using the widely-used Cahn-Hilliard equation as an example, we demonstrate that the Runge-Kutta IEQ method indeed can preserve the original energy dissipation laws for certain situations up to arbitrary high-order accuracy. Interested readers are encouraged to extend this idea to more general cases and apply it to other thermodynamically consistent models.