Non-conservation of linear momentum in widely used hierarchical methods in gravitational gas dynamics

TL;DR

This paper reveals that widely used hierarchical methods like FMM in gravitational simulations can violate linear momentum conservation at the system level, leading to unphysical center of mass displacement.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the fast multipole method causes non-conservation of linear momentum in gravitational simulations, despite obeying Newton's third law locally.

Findings

Newton's third law holds for cell pairs but not for the entire system.

System's center of mass can drift significantly over time.

Displacement persists regardless of particle number for certain parameters.

Abstract

The paper considers the implementation of the fast multipole method (FMM) in the PHANTOM code for the calculation of forces in a self-gravitating system. The gravitational interaction forces are divided into short-range and long-range interactions depending on the value of the tree opening parameter of the hierarchical kd-tree. It is demonstrated that Newton's third law holds for any pair of cells of the kd-tree engaged in mutual interaction. However, for the entire system a linear momentum is not conserved. As a result, there is an unphysical force that causes the center of mass to migrate. For example, for a pair of neutron stars, the displacement of the system's center of mass is found to be comparable to the radii of the objects at times of a few tens of Keplerian revolutions. This displacement cannot be reduced by increasing the number of particles for values of the tree opening parameter greater than 0.2. For smaller values, the time required for the calculation is significantly longer.