Symplectic integration for the collisional gravitational
Author(s)
Hernandez, David Michael; Bertschinger, Edmund
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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 nine integrals of motion of the N-body problem to machine precision. The integrator is second order, but the order can easily be increased by the method of Yoshida. We use fixed time step in all tests studied in this paper to ensure preservation of symplecticity. We study small N collisional problems and perform comparisons with typically used integrators. In particular, we find comparable or better performance when compared to the fourth-order Hermite method and much better performance than adaptive time step symplectic integrators introduced previously. We find better performance compared to SAKURA, a non-symplectic, non-time-reversible integrator based on a different two-body decomposition of the N-body problem. The integrator is a promising tool in collisional gravitational dynamics.
Date issued
2015-07Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics; MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space ResearchJournal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
Hernandez, David M., and Edmund Bertschinger. “Symplectic Integration for the Collisional Gravitational N -Body Problem.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 452.2 (2015): 1934–1944.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
0035-8711
1365-2966