arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Rainer Spurzem.
1- Simulations of star clusters and galactic nuclei: rotation and other challenges (R. Spurzem & C. Einsel) 2- Relaxation of elliptical galaxies (C. Boily) 3- Simulations with an Hybrid Nbody-Scf code (M. Hemsendorf) These are three two-page contributions to the Rutgers galaxy dynamics held in august, 1998. Each will be included in the proceedings to be published by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
The subjects and key questions faced by computational astrophysics using N-body simulations are discussed in the fields of globular star cluster dynamics, galactic nuclei and cosmological structure formation. After a comparison of the relevance of different N-body algorithms a new concept for a more flexible customized special purpose computer based on a combination of GRAPE and FPGA is proposed. It is an ideal machine for all kinds of N-body simulations using neighbour schemes, as the Ahmad-Cohen direct N-body codes and smoothed particle hydrodynamics for systems including gas.
A collisional $N$-body simulation using NBODY5 on a single CRAY YMP processor is followed well into the post-collapse regime. This is presently one of the largest particle numbers of all such models published, but some data for an even larger $N$ produced by using special-purpose computers have recently been presented. In contrast to previous ensemble-averaged $N$-body simulations the noise here is low enough to just compare this one single run with the expectations from statistical models based on the Fokker-Planck approximation. Agreement is as good as could be expected for the case of the evolution of the Lagrangian radii, radial and tangential velocity dispersions and various core quantities. We briefly discuss approximate models to understand number and energy of escapers and the question of gravothermal core oscillations; although the system exhibits post-collapse oscillations they turn out to be directly binary driven and we cannot prove the existence of a gravothermal expansion at this particle number. Finally in a detailed examination of the wandering of the density centre we find in contrast to some previous studies a clear long-time period of the order of about 14 half-mass crossing times.
We compare the results for the dynamical evolution of star clusters derived from anisotropic gaseous models with the data from N-body simulations of isolated and one-component systems, each having modest number of stars. The statistical quality of N-body data was improved by averaging results from many N-body runs, each with the same initial parameters but with different sequences of random numbers used to initialize positions and velocities of the particles. We study the development of anisotropy, the spatial evolution and energy generation by three-body binaries and its N-dependence. We estimate the following free parameters of anisotropic gaseous models: the time scale for collisional anisotropy decay and the coefficient in the formulae for energy generation by three-body binaries. To achieve a fair agreement between N-body and gaseous models for the core in pre- as well as in post-collapse only the energy generation by binaries had to be varied by N. We find that anisotropy has considerable influence on the spatial structure of the cluster particularly for the intermediate and outer regions.