  This paper presents a geometric-variational approach to continuous and
discrete mechanics and field theories. Using multisymplectic geometry, we show
that the existence of the fundamental geometric structures as well as their
preservation along solutions can be obtained directly from the variational
principle. In particular, we prove that a unique multisymplectic structure is
obtained by taking the derivative of an action function, and use this structure
to prove covariant generalizations of conservation of symplecticity and
Noether's theorem. Natural discretization schemes for PDEs, which have these
important preservation properties, then follow by choosing a discrete action
functional. In the case of mechanics, we recover the variational symplectic
integrators of Veselov type, while for PDEs we obtain covariant spacetime
integrators which conserve the corresponding discrete multisymplectic form as
well as the discrete momentum mappings corresponding to symmetries. We show
that the usual notion of symplecticity along an infinite-dimensional space of
fields can be naturally obtained by making a spacetime split. All of the
aspects of our method are demonstrated with a nonlinear sine-Gordon equation,
including computational results and a comparison with other discretization
schemes.
