On the minimal accuracy required for simulating self-gravitating systems by means of direct N-body methods

Abstract: The conservation of energy, linear momentum and angular momentum are important drivers for our physical understanding of the evolution of the Universe. These quantities are also conserved in Newton's laws of motion under gravity \citep{Newton:1687}. Numerical integration of the associated equations of motion is extremely challenging, in particular due to the steady growth of numerical errors (by round-off and discrete time-stepping, \cite{1981PAZh....7..752B,1993ApJ...415..715G,1993ApJ...402L..85H,1994LNP...430..131M}) and the exponential divergence \citep{1964ApJ...140..250M,2009MNRAS.392.1051U} between two nearby solution. As a result, numerical solutions to the general N-body problem are intrinsically questionable \citep{2003gmbp.book.....H,1994JAM....61..226L}. Using brute force integrations to arbitrary numerical precision we demonstrate empirically that ensembles of different realizations of resonant 3-body interactions produce statistically indistinguishable results. Although individual solutions using common integration methods are notoriously unreliable, we conjecture that an ensemble of approximate 3-body solutions accurately represents an ensemble of true solutions, so long as the energy during integration is conserved to better than 1/10. We therefore provide an independent confirmation that previous work on self-gravitating systems can actually be trusted, irrespective of the intrinsic chaotic nature of the N-body problem.