• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.165-168
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• 2005

We overview the GRAPE (GRAvity piPE) project. The goal of the GRAPE project is to accelerate the astrophysical N-body simulations. Since almost all computing time is spent for the evaluation of the gravitational force between particles, we can greatly accelerate many N-body simulations by developing a specialized hardware for the force calculation. In 1989, the first such hardware, GRAPE-1, was completed, with the peak speed of 120 Mflops. In 2003, GRAPE-6 was completed, with the peak speed of 64 Tflops, which is nearly 106 times faster than GRAPE-l and was the fastest computer at that time. In this paper, we review the basic concept of the GRAPE hardwares, the history of the GRAPE project, and two ongoing projects, GRAPE-DR and Project Milkyway.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.75-85
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• 2002

We present N-body simulations of globular clusters including gravitational field of the Galaxy, in order to study effects of tidal field systematically on the shape of outer parts of globular clusters using NBODY6. The Galaxy is assumed to be composed of central bulge and outer halo. We mvestigate the cluster of multi-mass models with a power-law initial mass function (IMF) starting with different initial masses, initial number of particles, different slopes of the IMF and different orbits of the cluster. We have examined the general evolution of the clusters, the shape of outer parts of the clusters, density profiles and the direction of tidal tails. The density profiles appear to become somewhat shallower just outside the tidal boundary consistent with some observed data. The position angle of the tidal tall depends on the location in the Galaxy as well as the direction of the motion of. clusters. We found that the clusters become more elongated at the apogalacticon than at the pengalacticon. The tidal tails may be used to trace the orbital paths of globular clusters.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.187-197
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• 2014

We have investigated the dynamical stability of the proposed companions orbiting the Algol type short-period eclipsing binary SW Lyncis (Kim et al. 2010). The two candidate companions are of stellar to substellar nature, and were inferred from timing measurements of the system's primary and secondary eclipses. We applied well-tested numerical techniques to accurately integrate the orbits of the two companions and to test for chaotic dynamical behavior. We carried out the stability analysis within a systematic parameter survey varying both the geometries and orientation of the orbits of the companions, as well as their masses. In all our numerical integrations we found that the proposed SW Lyn multi-body system is highly unstable on time-scales on the order of 1000 years. Our results cast doubt on the interpretation that the timing variations are caused by two companions. This work demonstrates that a straightforward dynamical analysis can help to test whether a best-fit companion-based model is a physically viable explanation for measured eclipse timing variations. We conclude that dynamical considerations reveal that the proposed SW Lyncis multi-body system most likely does not exist or the companions have significantly different orbital properties from those conjectured in Kim et al. (2010).