Figure 11
From: A new hybrid technique for modeling dense star clusters
Energy Conservation in the RAPID Code—The energy budget and overall energy conservation for the four clusters modeled by RAPID shown in Fig. 6. The top plot shows the total sum of the kinetic energy (red), potential energy (green), and multiple binding energy (purple) for all particles over time for a single representative model of each cluster. The energy carried away by the kinetic energy (blue-dotted) or binding energy (blue-dashed) of escaping particles is also shown. In the middle plot, we show the virial ratio between the kinetic and potential energies. The sum of all energies is plotted in Hénon units (black) in the top plot, while the lower plot shows the fractional change in total energy for all 10 realizations of each model. The total energy conservation error is dominated by the evolution of the N-body particles in a strong external potential (the slow upward trend) and occasional strong-encounters and tightly-bound multiple systems (discontinuous jumps)