Starlab: A Software Environment for Collisional Stellar Dynamics

Steve McMillan

Simon Portegies Zwart

Piet Hut

Jun Makino

The Starlab Project

Goal: to simulate the dynamics and stellar evolution of collisional/dense stellar systems

stellar dynamics

stellar and binary evolution

stellar collisions and mergers

external potentials

Result (10+ years later): a flexible software environment allowing the user to create, modify, evolve, and analyze models of stellar clusters

Starlab Tools

Starlab provides tools to perform basic operations

making and modifying model clusters

adding stellar properties

evolving clusters

analyzing and visualizing cluster evolution

Tools are connected via UNIX pipes, or users can link their own programs with the Starlab libraries

Making Model Clusters

Standard dynamical models

makecube, makesphere, makedisk

makeplummer

makeking, make_aniso_king

makepowerlaw

makepyth

Attributes

makemass, makesecondary, makebinary

add_tidal/plummer/power_law

scale

flatten, freeze, set_com, ...

set_radius, add_star

Measuring Cluster Properties

Analysis tools

compute_com, compute_density

lagrad

energy, sys_stats, star_stats, ...

hop, kingfit, ...

Visualization

xstarplot, xhrdplot

starcluster

snap_to_image

partiview

Examples

Create a 500-particle W0 = 5 King model, with numbered stars, unscaled

makeking -n 500 -w 5 -i -u

Same, with a Kroupa mass function and stellar properties, scaled to standard units

makeking -n 500 -w 5 -i -u \

| makemass -F Kroupa -l 0.1 -u 100 \

| add_star -T 10 \

| scale -s

Now add some binaries and display the cluster

makeking -n 500 -w 5 -i -u \

| makemass -F Kroupa -l 0.1 -u 100 \

| makesecondary -f 0.1 \

| add_star -T 10 \

| scale -m 1 -e -0.25 -q 0.5 \

| makebinary -l 1 -u 10 \

| sys_stats -o \

| xstarplot

Evolution

Simple systems

leapfrog

flat_hermite

More complex systems

kira

kira_smallN

SeBa

Scattering experiments

low_n(3)_evolve, scatter(3)

SeBa_scatter3

sigma3, rate3

Examples

Simple dynamics

makeplummer -n 100 -i | kira -D 0

Turning on stellar evolution

SeBa

makeplummer -n 100 -i \

| makemass -l 1 -u 10 \

| add_star -T 10 | scale -s \

| kira -S -D 0 -d 10

GRAPE runs

makeplummer -n 10000 -i -u | hscale -s \

| kira -D 0

Images and Animations

GIF/PNG images and movies

makepyth -i \

| flat_hermite -e 0 -a 0.01 -D 0.125 -d 10 -t 80 \

| hxstarplot -b

makepyth -i \

| flat_hermite -e 0 -a 0.01 -D 0.125 -d 10 -t 80 \

| snap_to_image -a -p 3 -N 3 -s 400 -d -o movie

makeking -w 12 -n 256 -i \

| makemass -l 0.5 -u 10 \

| scale -s \

| kira -t 10 -D -5 \

| snap_to_image -s 400 -a -m -p -2 -a -d -o movie

More Visualization Tools

Starcluster

Partiview

Examples/demos

Writing your own...

Modifying the Starlab distribution

recommended for experts only

CVS source may change and local modifications could be lost

Compiling using the Starlab headers and libraries

need a Makefile containing the following lines

details of classes and libraries on the Starlab website (http://www.sns.ias.edu/~starlab)

example

CXXFLAGS = -I$(STARLAB_INSTALL_PATH)/include/starlab -DHAVE_CONFIG_H

LDLIBS = -L$(STARLAB_INSTALL_PATH)/lib/starlab ldyn -lnode -lstd -lm

Stellar Collisions and Black Hole Formation - Princeton

Steve McMillan

2003-07-01T00:11:19

Steve McMillan