New high order symplectic integrators via generating functions with its application in many-body problem (Q2185877)

A new class of one-step symplectic integration schemes are constructed in terms of a generating function of the third kind for separable Hamiltonian systems whose Hamiltonian has the form \(T (p)+U(q)\). The order conditions are studied in terms of bi-coloured trees, and some simplifying assumptions are proposed to reduce the number of independent conditions. Compared to explicit symplectic methods with a given number of stages, the new methods have far more available parameters that can be used to construct more efficient methods. Compared to fully implicit Runge-Kutta methods, they are only implicit in the approximation \(q\) at the time-grid points, which admits very good starting guesses obtained by interpolating from the data of previous steps. The new methods require in addition the evaluation of the Hessian matrix times a vector compared to explicit symplectic partitioned Runge-Kutta methods, which only require the evaluation of the gradient of the Hamiltonian function. For many-body problems, one evaluation of the gradient of the potential together with the action of its Hessian on vectors is cheaper than two evaluations of the gradient. A family of time-symmetric \(10\)-th order symplectic integration methods is constructed for the considered separable Hamiltonian systems. The numerical experiments for a two-body problem, and for a \(9\)-body problem representing to the solar system, confirm the expected orders of convergence.