Explicit energy-conserving schemes for the three-body problem (Q1121046)

Conservation and symmetry are two fundamental characteristics of physics. But ordinary schemes for computation do not guarantee conservation of total energy. Even for the simplest case of the system, \(d^ 2x/dt^ 2=f(x)\), the ordinary methods, including the Euler method and the Runge- Kutta method, do not conserve the total energy. This question was raised first by \textit{D. Greenspan} [ibid. 56, 28-41 (1984; Zbl 0561.65056)] and implicit schemes were given. The second author [ibid. 79, No.2, 473-476 (1988; Zbl 0667.65063)] gave an explicit scheme for this system. It is natural to extend the method to the famous three-body problem.