I'd like to solicit ideas from anybody who's actually *using* N-body
simulators for research. What are some interesting things to work on
in N-body simulation? For example, do we understand how to choose
individual time-steps for particles?
One paper I found very interesting was Jernigan & Porter's ``A tree
code with logarithmic reduction of force terms, hierarchical
regularization of all variables, and explicit accuracy controls.'' (ApJ
Sup 71:871, 1989 Dec). It seems to me their method NlogN is not at all
amenable to softening, and thus may be a much better than the Barnes
and Hut method for an ``ideal'' N-body simulation where your N is close
to the actual N of the system. (I think the only systems we're even
close to such a simulation is, just maybe, simulating a single small
globular cluster.) I've tried to contact the authors via e-mail but
haven't got a response. Anybody know where I can get ahold of Jernigan
or Porter?
-- "The money spent on the Mars Observer was not sent to Mars. A few tons of metal were. The engineering lessons and experience from building the spacecraft and instruments will remain on Earth to benefit future missions if we choose to undertake them." -- Steve Collins || Wayne Hayes wayne@csri.utoronto.ca