A Coordinate System for Dynamical Instabilities in Hierarchical Systems in REBOUND
TLDR
A new coordinate system for REBOUND's TRACE integrator significantly improves accuracy and speed for simulating wide binary systems and hierarchical instabilities.
Key contributions
- Implements new coordinates in REBOUND's TRACE for wide binary systems.
- Addresses poor performance of traditional hybrid integrators in this regime.
- Achieves up to 9x speedup over IAS15 with statistically similar results.
- Qualitatively correct in planet-planet scattering, stellar flybys, and ZLK oscillations.
Why it matters
Simulating wide binary systems and hierarchical instabilities accurately and efficiently is crucial for astrophysics. This work provides a robust solution, enabling faster and more reliable studies of complex dynamical systems where previous methods struggled. It significantly advances N-body simulations in REBOUND.
Original Abstract
We implement coordinates suitable for studying wide binary systems in TRACE, a hybrid integrator in the widely used open-source N-body integration package REBOUND. This is a regime in which traditional hybrid integrators perform poorly. The coordinate system supports close encounters between any pair of bodies in the system. We describe the implementation of this coordinate system and benchmark its performance against other integrators in the REBOUND ecosystem. In tests of planet-planet scattering, stellar flybys, and ZLK oscillations. TRACE in wide binary coordinates is qualitatively correct when other hybrid methods fail, and in many cases returns statistically similar results to the high-precision IAS15 integrator with up to 9x speedups. We also provide some guidelines for when use of these coordinates are appropriate.
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