Context. Hierarchical triple stars are ideal laboratories for studying the interplay between
orbital dynamics and stellar evolution. Both mass loss from stellar winds and strong …

We review recent progress and future prospects for harnessing powerful tools from
theoretical high-energy physics, such as scattering amplitudes and effective field theory, to …

Close encounters between two bodies in a disc often result in a single orbital deflection.
However, within their Jacobi volumes, where the gravitational forces between the two bodies …

In self-gravitating N-body systems, small perturbations introduced at the start, or infinitesimal
errors that are produced by the numerical integrator or are due to limited precision in the …

Eccentric mergers are a signature of the dynamical formation channel of binary black holes
(BBHs) in dense stellar environments and hierarchical triple systems. Here, we investigate …

The time-step criterion plays a crucial role in direct N-body codes. If not chosen carefully, it
will cause a secular drift in the energy error. Shared, adaptive time-step criteria commonly …

We study the three-body problem going from Newtonian mechanics to general relativity. In
the classical case, we model the interactions in a typical chaotic configuration, identifying …

Dynamical chaos is a fundamental manifestation of gravity in astrophysical, many-body
systems. The spectrum of Lyapunov exponents quantifies the associated exponential …

Aims. Our aim is to investigate the properties of a cluster of intermediate-mass black holes
(IMBHs) surrounding a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Methods. We simulated clusters of …

Recently, we estimated that about 5 per cent of unstable supermassive black hole triple
systems are fundamentally unpredictable. These gargantuan chaotic systems are able to …