Artificial precession and instability in solar system and planetary simulations: analytic and numerical results

TL;DR

This paper analytically and numerically investigates artificial precession caused by Democratic Heliocentric Coordinates in solar system simulations, revealing its magnitude and impact on stability.

Contribution

It derives the two-body artificial precession effect of DHC and assesses its significance in planetary simulations, especially for Mercury and Jupiter.

Findings

Artificial precession is small for solar system bodies but much larger for Jupiter.

In Mercury-Sun systems with GR, artificial precession is negligible.

Large artificial precession occurs in Mercury-Jupiter systems without GR, but is not dangerous with proper timesteps.

Abstract

Wisdom--Holman (WH) methods are algorithms used as a basis for a wide range of codes used to solve problems in solar system and planetary dynamics. The problems range from the growth and migration of planets to the stability of the solar system. In many cases, these codes work with Democratic Heliocentric Coordinates (DHC) which offer some advantages. However, it has been noted these coordinates affect the dynamics of solar system bodies in simulations, in particular Mercury's, and introduce artificial precession which affects solar system stability. In this work, we analytically derive the two-body artificial precession induced by DHC. We show the effect is small for solar system bodies, but the artificial effect on Jupiter is $242$ times larger than on Mercury. In a two-body Mercury-Sun system with general relativity (GR), artificial precession is negligible compared to GR precession, even with extreme timesteps that amplify the numerical effects. A simple two-planet Mercury--Jupiter system without GR amplifies artificial precession significantly. However, large artificial precession or artificial instability is not a danger unless one uses large timesteps that break the surrogate Hamiltonian approximation.