Related papers: Effective N-body models of composite collisionless…
We describe the astrophysical and numerical basis of N-body simulations, both of collisional stellar systems (dense star clusters and galactic centres) and collisionless stellar dynamics (galaxies and large-scale structure). We explain and…
[Abridged] N-body simulations of collisionless collapse have offered important clues to the construction of realistic stellar dynamical models of elliptical galaxies. Understanding this idealized and relatively simple process, by which…
N-body simulations are essential for understanding the formation and evolution of structure in the Universe. However, the discrete nature of these simulations affects their accuracy when modelling collisionless systems. We introduce a new…
We present a method of including galaxy formation in dissipationless N-body simulations. Galaxies that form during the evolution are identified at several epochs and replaced by single massive soft particles. This allows one to produce…
The stability of a galaxy model is most easily assessed through N-body simulation. Particle-mesh codes have been widely used for this purpose, since they enable the largest numbers of particles to be employed. We show that the functional…
Self-consistent N-body simulations are efficient tools to study galactic dynamics. However, using them to study individual trajectories (or ensembles) in detail can be challenging. Such orbital studies are important to shed light on global…
The presence of protostellar disks can greatly increase the dissipation during close stellar encounters, leading to the formation of a significant population of binaries during the initial collapse and virialization of a cluster. We have…
N-body simulations of collisionless collapse have offered important clues to the construction of realistic stellar dynamical models of elliptical galaxies. Such simulations confirm and quantify the qualitative expectation that rapid…
Space-based observations are beginning to yield detailed information about the stellar kinematics at the very centers of galaxies, within the sphere of gravitational influence of the black hole. The structure and dynamics of these regions…
N-body simulations of collisionless collapse have offered important clues to the construction of realistic stellar dynamical models of elliptical galaxies. Such simulations confirm and quantify the qualitative expectation that rapid…
In these lecture notes, we describe the current state-of-the-art for numerical simulations of large-scale structure and galaxy formation. Numerical simulations play a central role in the preparation and the exploitation of large-scale…
The standard formation model of close-in low-mass planets involves efficient inward migration followed by growth through giant impacts after the protoplanetary gas disk disperses. While detailed N-body simulations have enhanced our…
Stellar systems are broadly divided into collisional and non-collisional. The latter are large-N systems with long relaxation timescales and can be simulated disregarding two-body interactions, while either computationally expensive direct…
In this paper I focus on three topics related to the dynamical evolution of small galaxy groups, for which the input of N-body simulations has been decisive. These are the merging rates in compact groups, the properties of remnants of…
Thin stellar discs on both galactic and nuclear, sub-kpc scales are believed to be fragile structures that would be easily destroyed in major mergers. In turn, this makes the age-dating of their stellar populations a useful diagnostics for…
The evolution of compact groups of galaxies may represent one of the few places in the nearby universe in which massive galaxies are being forged through a complex set of processes involving tidal interaction, ram-pressure stripping, and…
Cosmological N-Body simulations have become an essential tool for studying formation of large scale structure. These simulations are computationally challenging even though the available computing power gets better every year. A number of…
We present a general scheme for constructing Monte Carlo realizations of equilibrium, collisionless galaxy models with known distribution function (DF) f_0. Our method uses importance sampling to find the sampling DF f_s that minimizes the…
These lectures are intended to provide an introduction to the rich interplay between N-body simulations and stellar-kinematic observations of galaxies. The first section describes the kinematic properties of galaxies that are accessible to…
Simulations of purely self-gravitating N-body systems are often used in astrophysics and cosmology to study the collisionless limit of such systems. Their results for macroscopic quantities should then converge well for sufficiently large…