The gravitational million-body problem

By Douglas Heggie. 2001

252 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We review what has been learned recently using N-body simulations about the evolution of globular clusters. While simulations of star clusters have become more realistic, and now include the evolution of single and binary stars, the prospect of reaching large enough N is still a distant one. Nevertheless more restricted kinds of simulations have recently brought valuable progress for certain problems of current observational interest, including the origin and structure of tidal tails of globular clusters. In addition, such simulations have forced us to rethink some basic aspects of stellar dynamics, including, in particular, the process of escape. Finally we turn to faster, approximate methods for studying star cluster dynamics, where the role of N-body simulations is one of calibration.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8d33b04e42cd292703cddae45508e37668b1b07b

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

Formation and dynamical evolution of multiple stellar generations in globular clusters (2008, background): “Heggie & Hut 2003, and references therein for a review) have shown that internal two-body relaxation and tidal shocks cause stars to escape from clusters, eventually leading to complete cluster dissolution.”
Dynamical Formation of Close Binary Systems in Globular Clusters (2003, background): “For a general introduction and review, see Heggie & Hut (2 003).”
Dynamical evolution of black hole subsystems in idealized star clusters (2013, methodology): “We will do this by considering the energy generated by a BH binary as it hardens and is ultimately ejected from the system, as was done for the onecomponent case by Heggie & Hut (2003).”
Gravitational N-Body Simulations (2003, background): “In conclusion, the shape of things to come is now under discussion [Hut et al., 2003; Heggie & Hut, 2003].”
A comprehensive set of simulations studying the influence of gas expulsion on star cluster evolution (2007, methodology): “At the virial radius, rv, the initial crossing time tCross is given by (Hut & Heggie 2003): tCross = 2.82 r1.”