PoMiN: a Post-Minkowskian N-Body Solver
N-body code which solves Hamilton's equations for a system of particles using the N-body Hamiltonian in the following paper:
https://arxiv.org/abs/0807.0214 [Ledvinka, T., Schafer, G., Bicak, J., Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 251101 (2008)]
The Hamiltonian presented in the paper above models a system of weakly gravitating point particles. It is fully special relativistic, but includes only first-order effects in (Newton's constant) G from General Relativity.
The code uses a fourth-order Runge-Kutta integrator, and has a computational complexity that scales as N^2. The code implements a basic, global adaptive timestepping scheme, based on the distances and velocities of the two closest particles. Support for parallel computing has not yet been implemented.
For more, see link:doc/pomin.pdf[pomin.pdf].
pomin takes input from the standard input (stdin) and outputs to the standard output (stdout); both of which are in the comma-separated values (CSV) format (see the INPUT and OUTPUT sections).
For more information about using stdin and stdout, see the NOTES section below. Also see the EXAMPLES section for some useful uses.
Print debug (e.g., auxiliary values and metadata) information to stdout.
-d
Print verbose (e.g., wall-time) information to stderr.
-v
Which parts of the Hamiltonian to use:
-p <parts>
where <parts> is one of the following (see paper for definitions of H1, H2, H3):
1 to use H1 only
12 to use H1+H2
13 to use H1+H3 or
123 to use H1+H2+H3 (full Hamiltonian, default)
Input must be read from stdin as one line in the following format:
description,start-time,end-time,timestep,iterations,courant-number,gravitational-constant,number-of-particles,mass_1,qx_1,qy_1,qz_1,px_1,py_1,pz_1,mass_2,qx_2,...
INPUT, TYPE, DESCRIPTION
description, string, ignored by program--except it cannot be empty
start-time, float, time to start at (physics time)
end-time, float, time to end at (physics time)
timestep, float, (maximum) length of each computational iteration
iterations, integer, upper bound of iterations (0 = unbounded)
courant-number, float, adaptive-timestep parameter (0 = off)
gravitational-constant, float, you know: G
number-of-particles integer, number of interacting particles
mass_1, float, mass of particle 1
qx_1, float, x-position of particle 1
..., ..., ...
py_3, float, y-momentum of particle 3
..., ..., ...
NOTE: the speed of light c is assumed to have a value of 1.
NOTE: the 'number-of-particles' is the number of fully interacting particles in the system. Any additional particles in the input line after the first 'number-of-particles' particles will be treated as test particles. Set 'number-of-particles' to zero if all particles in the input line are fully interacting particles (no test particles).
NOTE: the 'courant-number' is the ratio of the change in distance between the two closest particles (in a single timestep) to the distance between those particles. A positive 'courant-number' turns on adaptive timestepping and computes the timestep using the distances between all particles, including test particles. Setting 'courant-number' to zero turns off adaptive timestepping. A negative 'courant-number' turns on adaptive timestepping, but computes the timestep (with the absolute value of 'courant-number') using only the distances between fully interacting particles.
WARNING: the 'description' field cannot be empty due to the strtok(1) function parsing; however, using a unique value here is helpful when selecting input to use with, e.g., grep(1).
To generate a header line for n particles, run the “header” make(1) target:
make header N=n
The pomin code will automatically re-run itself if it detects another line of input (i.e., recursion).
Output is written to stdout (except for errors, which are written to stderr) in this form:
iteration_#,time,qx_1,qy_1,qz_1,px_1,py_1,pz_1,qx_2,qy_2,...
To run the validation tests, see the INSTRUCTIONS.sh file in the following directory:
source/validation
The INSTRUCTIONS.sh file itself may be run as a shell script in validation directory.
The validation tests in the paper were performed using gcc 5.4.0 and GNU Awk 4.1.3; they may not run properly with older versions of gcc and Awk. The latest version of the code (v1.1) has been tested with gcc 5.4.0, gcc 7.3.0, GNU Awk 4.1.3, and GNU Awk 4.1.4.
If the debug flag is given, some metadata and other variables are also printed:
The above output will be prefixed with the time and date (formatted in accordance with ISO 8601: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS) of when the program was executed along with the git(1) hash at that time (with an idicator of whether the working directory was clean or not) and which mathematical precision was used (double or quad). Furthermore, the standard output will be interlaced with the following information (identified by headers):
H1,H2,H3,dH1,dH2,dH3,qdotx_1,qdoty_1,qdotz_1,qdotx_2,...
where 'H' and 'dH' are the values of the Hamiltonian (H1+H2+H3) and its derivative at that given time, followed by the components of the derivative of each particle's position along the three Cartesian axes.
+stdin+ (standard in) and +stdout+ (standard out) are special names for two ordinary files. To get input to (and output from) pomin all you have to do is write to (and read) these files; imagine your data travelling like this:
stdin --> pomin --> stdout
Now, by default, +stdin+ is associated with your keyboard and +stdout+ is associated with your monitor. But typing the input by hand only to have it display on screen isn't very useful; so we redirect these “file descriptors“ to other files. For example, to redirect the output (+stdout+) to a file we write
pomin > file
That right angle-bracket (>) will take the output of a command and write it to a file; this is known as “redirection.”
Now we only need to get our input (+stdin+) from someplace better. To do this, we use a “pipe” (a vertical bar: |) to take the output of one command and give it as input to another command like so:
cat file | pomin
The cat command takes the contents of a file and writes it to +stdout+ -- then the pipe takes this output and writes it to the stdin of the next program; essentially creating a cohesive stream of data:
/\-- pipe --\/
cat --> stdout stdin --> pomin
All of this sounds like more work than necessary but, in fact, it makes the program much more robust and useful.
The Git repository can be obtained through the HTTPS protocol with
git clone https://github.com/justincfeng/PoMiN.git
To compile run
make [double | quad]
where double (the default) or quad is the desired precision. Then, to install the program on an operating system that abides by the Filesystem Heirarchy Standard (FHS; e.g., a GNU/Linux distribution) run make install and the executible will be put into /usr/local/bin/ and this man page will be put into /usr/local/man/man1/ so that you can run the program from any directory and view its manual at any time with man pomin
There are several files in the ./scripts directory that can be used to automate various tasks. Each file can be executed with the -h flag to show usage and help information; e.g., python ./script/animate.py -h
To use a file named +input.csv+ that has exactly one line of input (as described in the INPUT section) and write the output to a file called +output.csv+, try
cat input.csv | pomin > output.csv
To use as input a line from a file (of any size) called +input.csv+ with “test one” in the description field and only save every other output line (and the header, line #1):
grep “test one” input.csv | pomin | awk 'NR == 1 || NR % 2 == 0' > output.csv
To run all of the lines (except the header) from a file and split their outputs into seperate files:
tail -n +2 input.csv | pomin | csplit --prefix="output/test_" -sz - '/^iteration/' '{*}'
To print only the first and last lines of output:
pomin | sed -e 1b -e '$!d'
Developed at the University of Texas at Austin by the following authors:
Mark Baumann markb@physics.utexas.edu + Joel S. Doss jdoss@uoregon.edu + Justin C. Feng jcfeng@physics.utexas.edu + Bryton T.D. Hall email@bryton.io + Lucas Spencer
This program is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE file.
stdin(3), stdout(3), stderr(3), grep(1), cat(1), echo(1), awk(1), sed(1), head(1), tail(1), csplit(1)