Related papers: Time stepping N-body simulations
Symplectic integrators are the preferred method of solving conservative $N$-body problems in cosmological, stellar cluster, and planetary system simulations because of their superior error properties and ability to compute orbital…
Symplectic integration algorithms are well-suited for long-term integrations of Hamiltonian systems because they preserve the geometric structure of the Hamiltonian flow. However, this desirable property is generally lost when adaptive…
Time-symmetric integration schemes share with symplectic schemes the property that their energy errors show a much better behavior than is the case for generic integration schemes. Allowing adaptive time steps typically leads to a loss of…
Calculating the long term solution of ordinary differential equations, such as those of the $N$-body problem, is central to understanding a wide range of dynamics in astrophysics, from galaxy formation to planetary chaos. Because generally…
We present a new time-stepping criterion for N-body simulations that is based on the true dynamical time of a particle. This allows us to follow the orbits of particles correctly in all environments since it has better adaptivity than…
We derive a new criterion for estimating characteristic dynamical timescales in N-body simulations. The criterion uses the second, third, and fourth derivatives of particle positions: acceleration, jerk, and snap. It can be used for…
This paper describes a fourth-order integration algorithm for the gravitational N-body problem based on discrete Lagrangian mechanics. When used with shared timesteps, the algorithm is momentum conserving and symplectic. We generalize the…
Modelling the cosmic large-scale structure can be done through numerical N-body simulations or by using perturbation theory. Here, we present an N-body approach that effectively implements a multi-step forward model based on Lagrangian…
Hill's equations are an approximation that is useful in a number of areas of astrophysics including planetary rings and planetesimal disks. We derive a symplectic method for integrating Hill's equations based on a generalized leapfrog. This…
We explore the construction of new symplectic numerical integration schemes to be used in Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and study their efficiency. Two integration schemes from Blanes et al. (2014), and a new scheme based on optimal acceptance…
Computational efficiency demands discretised, hierarchically organised, and individually adaptive time-step sizes (known as the block-step scheme) for the time integration of N-body models. However, most existing N-body codes adapt…
The method of choice for integrating the equations of motion of the general N-body problem has been to use an individual time step scheme. For the sake of efficiency, block time steps have been the most popular, where all time step sizes…
Symplectic N-body integrators are widely used to study problems in celestial mechanics. The most popular algorithms are of 2nd and 4th order, requiring 2 and 6 substeps per timestep, respectively. The number of substeps increases rapidly…
The Stoermer-Verlet-leapfrog group of integrators commonly used in molecular dynamics simulations has long become a textbook subject and seems to have been studied exhaustively. There are, however, a few striking effects in performance of…
In recent decades, there have been many attempts to construct symplectic integrators with variable time steps, with rather disappointing results. In this paper we identify the causes for this lack of performance, and find that they fall…
A new approach is developed to integrate numerically the equations of motion for systems of interacting rigid polyatomic molecules. With the aid of a leapfrog framework, we directly involve principal angular velocities into the integration,…
The shearing sheet is a model dynamical system that is used to study the small-scale dynamics of astrophysical disks. Numerical simulations of particle trajectories in the shearing sheet usually employ the leapfrog integrator, but this…
Symplectic integrators are widely used for long-term integration of conservative astrophysical problems due to their ability to preserve the constants of motion; however, they cannot in general be applied in the presence of nonconservative…
We present a new symplectic integrator designed for collisional gravitational $N$-body problems which makes use of Kepler solvers. The integrator is also reversible and conserves 9 integrals of motion of the $N$-body problem to machine…
Symplectic integration algorithms have become popular in recent years in long-term orbital integrations because these algorithms enforce certain conservation laws that are intrinsic to Hamiltonian systems. For problems with large variations…