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[ascl:1010.076] Starlab: A Software Environment for Collisional Stellar Dynamics

Traditionally, a simulation of a dense stellar system required choosing an initial model, running an integrator, and analyzing the output. Almost all of the effort went into writing a clever integrator that could handle binaries, triples and encounters between various multiple systems efficiently. Recently, the scope and complexity of these simulations has increased dramatically, for three reasons: 1) the sheer size of the data sets, measured in Terabytes, make traditional 'awking and grepping' of a single output file impractical; 2) the addition of stellar evolution data brings qualitatively new challenges to the data reduction; 3) increased realism of the simulations invites realistic forms of 'SOS': Simulations of Observations of Simulations, to be compared directly with observations. We are now witnessing a shift toward the construction of archives as well as tailored forms of visualization including the use of virtual reality simulators and planetarium domes, and a coupling of both with budding efforts in constructing virtual observatories. This review describes these new trends, presenting Starlab as the first example of a full software environment for realistic large-scale simulations of dense stellar systems.

Code site:
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~starlab/starlab.html https://github.com/amusecode/Starlab
Described in:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003IAUS..208..331H
Bibcode:
2010ascl.soft10076H

Views: 5497

ascl:1010.076
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