1999/06/08 by Rainer Spurzem, R. Spurzem, Spurzem, R.
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #FOS: Physical sciences #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9906154
32 pages, 13 figures, in press in Riffert, H., Werner K. (eds), Computational Astrophysics, The Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics (JCAM), Elsevier Press, Amsterdam, 1999
arxiv created 1999/06/08 · openalex publication_date 1999/06/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Special high-accuracy direct force summation N-body algorithms and their relevance for the simulation of the dynamical evolution of star clusters and other gravitating N-body systems in astrophysics are presented, explained and compared with other methods. Other methods means here approximate physical models based on the Fokker-Planck equation as well as other, approximate algorithms to compute the gravitational potential in N-body systems. Questions regarding the parallel implementation of direct ``brute force'' N-body codes are discussed. The astrophysical application of the models to the theory of relaxing rotating and non-rotating collisional star clusters is presented, briefly mentioning the questions of the validity of the Fokker-Planck approximation, the existence of gravothermal oscillations and of rotation and primordial binaries.