A Note on the Construction of Explicit Symplectic Integrators for Schwarzschild Spacetimes

Abstract

Abstract In recent publications, the construction of explicit symplectic integrators for Schwarzschild- and Kerr-type spacetimes is based on splitting and composition methods for numerical integrations of Hamiltonians or time-transformed Hamiltonians associated with these spacetimes. Such splittings are not unique but have various options. A Hamiltonian describing the motion of charged particles around the Schwarzschild black hole with an external magnetic field can be separated into three, four, and five explicitly integrable parts. It is shown through numerical tests of regular and chaotic orbits that the three-part splitting method is the best of the three Hamiltonian splitting methods in accuracy. In the three-part splitting, optimized fourth-order partitioned Runge–Kutta and Runge–Kutta–Nyström explicit symplectic integrators exhibit the best accuracies. In fact, they are several orders of magnitude better than the fourth-order Yoshida algorithms for appropriate time steps. The first two algorithms have a small additional computational cost compared with the latter ones. Optimized sixth-order partitioned Runge–Kutta and Runge–Kutta–Nyström explicit symplectic integrators have no dramatic advantages over the optimized fourth-order ones in accuracy during long-term integrations due to roundoff errors. The idea of finding the integrators with the best performance is also suitable for Hamiltonians or time-transformed Hamiltonians of other curved spacetimes including Kerr-type spacetimes. When the numbers of explicitly integrable splitting sub-Hamiltonians are as small as possible, such splitting Hamiltonian methods would bring better accuracies. In this case, the optimized fourth-order partitioned Runge–Kutta and Runge–Kutta–Nyström methods are worth recommending.