Step-size effect in the time-transformed leapfrog integrator on elliptic and hyperbolic orbits

Abstract

ABSTRACT A drift-kick-drift (DKD) type leapfrog symplectic integrator applied for a time-transformed separable Hamiltonian (or time-transformed symplectic integrator; TSI) has been known to conserve the Kepler orbit exactly. We find that for an elliptic orbit, such feature appears for an arbitrary step size. But it is not the case for a hyperbolic orbit: When the half step size is larger than the conjugate momenta of the mean anomaly, a phase transition happens and the new position jumps to the non-physical counterpart of the hyperbolic trajectory. Once it happens, the energy conservation is broken. Instead, the kinetic energy minus the potential energy becomes a new conserved quantity. We provide a mathematical explanation for such phenomenon. Our result provides a deeper understanding of the TSI method, and a useful constraint of the step size when the TSI method is used to solve the hyperbolic encounters. This is particular important when an (Bulirsch–Stoer) extrapolation integrator is used together, which requires the convergence of integration errors.