2008/07/31 by Simon Portegies Zwart, Steve McMillan, Stefan Harfst +22 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Scientific Research and Discoveries #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.newast.2008.10.006
24 pages, To appear in New Astronomy Source code available at http://muse.li
openalex publication_date 2008/10/31 · arxiv created 2008/11/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present MUSE, a software framework for combining existing computational tools for different astrophysical domains into a single multiphysics, multiscale application. MUSE facilitates the coupling of existing codes written in different languages by providing inter-language tools and by specifying an interface between each module and the framework that represents a balance between generality and computational efficiency. This approach allows scientists to use combinations of codes to solve highly-coupled problems without the need to write new codes for other domains or significantly alter their existing codes. MUSE currently incorporates the domains of stellar dynamics, stellar evolution and stellar hydrodynamics for studying generalized stellar systems. We have now reached a "Noah's Ark" milestone, with (at least) two available numerical solvers for each domain. MUSE can treat multi-scale and multi-physics systems in which the time- and size-scales are well separated, like simulating the evolution of planetary systems, small stellar associations, dense stellar clusters, galaxies and galactic nuclei. In this paper we describe three examples calculated using MUSE: the merger of two galaxies, the merger of two evolving stars, and a hybrid N-body simulation. In addition, we demonstrate an implementation of MUSE on a distributed computer which may also include special-purpose hardware, such as GRAPEs or GPUs, to accelerate computations. The current MUSE code base is publicly available as open source at http://muse.li