{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/slimplectic-integrators-variational","title":"Slimplectic Integrators: Variational Integrators for General Nonconservative Systems","arxiv_id":"1506.08443","date":"2015-06-28","proceeding":null,"authors":["David Tsang","Chad R. Galley","Leo C. Stein","Alec Turner"],"abstract":"Symplectic integrators are widely used for long-term integration of conservative astrophysical problems due to their ability to preserve the constants of motion; however, they cannot in general be applied in the presence of nonconservative interactions. In this Letter, we develop the \"slimplectic\" integrator, a new type of numerical integrator that shares many of the benefits of traditional symplectic integrators yet is applicable to general nonconservative systems. We utilize a fixed time-step variational integrator formalism applied to the principle of stationary nonconservative action developed in Galley, 2013; Galley, Tsang & Stein, 2014. As a result, the generalized momenta and energy (Noether current) evolutions are well-tracked. We discuss several example systems, including damped harmonic oscillators, Poynting-Robertson drag, and gravitational radiation reaction, by utilizing our new publicly available code to demonstrate the slimplectic integrator algorithm. Slimplectic integrators are well-suited for integrations of systems where nonconservative effects play an important role in the long-term dynamical evolution. As such they are particularly appropriate for cosmological or celestial N-body dynamics problems where nonconservative interactions, e.g. gas interactions or dissipative tides, can play an important role.","url_abs":"http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.08443v3","url_pdf":"http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.08443v3.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"slimplectic-integrators-variational","repo_url":"https://github.com/davtsang/slimplectic","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}