Grand Challenge Problems in Computational Astrophysics

Workshop II: N-Body Problems in Astrophysics

April 18 - 22, 2005

Schedule and Presentations

Program Poster PDF

Organizing Committee:

Ben Moore, Chair (University of Zurich)
Sverre Aarseth (Cambridge University)
Willy Benz (University of Bern)
Geoff Bryden (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Hugh Couchman (McMaster University)
Piet Hut (Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton)
Ben Leimkuhler (University of Leicester,UK)
Joseph Monaghan (Monash University, Australia)
Matthias Steinmetz (Astrophysical Institute Potsdam)

Scientific Background

The N-body technique has proved to be a powerful tool for investigating a diverse range of Astrophysical phenomenon from the formation and evolution of planetary systems, to the origin of galaxies and large scale structure of the universe. This workshop will bring together experts from many areas of astrophysics and mathematics who have a common interest in the N-body technique. We will begin with several introductory overview talks that will give the background for the rest of the workshop and present the scientific, algorithmic and hardware challenges faced by this community. Then the following topics will be discussed:

• The dynamics of small and large N systems
• The formation and stability of planetary systems
• Smoothed particle hydro-dynamics as an N-body method
• Galaxy formation: collisionless dark matter, collisional fluids & star-formation
• Integration schemes and symplectic methods
• Long term integration: stability of the solar system
• The dynamics star clusters & black holes
• Test problems for the N-body and SPH methods
• Numerical convergence, stability and approximations
• Hierarchical mesh & Treecodes
• Parallelisation of the N-body technique

The emphases of this workshop are: 1) to illustrate the wide range of problems that can be addressed by the N-body technique, 2) to air the various approaches taken to handle the wide range of spatial and temporal scales arising in such problems, 3) to promote discussion of how codes necessarily adopting a limited value of N can be used to explore systems containing a far larger number of objects, and 4) to explore the most successful approaches for inclusion of physics other than gravitation.

Speakers

Registration

Online registration is closed for this workshop because we have reached capacity. You may still be able to register at the door on the day of the workshop but only on a space-available basis.

Contact Us:

Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM)
Attn: PCAWS2
460 Portola Plaza
Los Angeles CA 90095-7121
Phone: 310 825-4755
Fax: 310 825-4756
Email: ipam@ucla.edu
Website: http://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/pcaws2/