Generalized disks of contractivity for explicit and implicit Runge-Kutta methods

The A-contractivity of Runge-Kutta methods with respect to an inner product norm was investigated thoroughly by Butcher and Burrage (who used the term B-stability). Their theory is extended to contractivity in a region bounded by a circle through the origin. The largest possible circle is calculated for many known explicit Runge-Kutta methods. As a rule it is considerably smaller than the stability region, and in several cases it degenerates to a point. It is shown that an explicit Runge-Kutta method cannot be contractive in any circle of this class if it is more than fourth order accurate.