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Getting started

  • Quickstart
  • Installation
    • What you need
    • Getting the code
    • Checking what the build will use
    • Building
    • Checking that it works

Using StarSmasher

  • Using StarSmasher
    • Running a simulation
      • Choosing the number of ranks
      • GPU or CPU
      • Block timesteps
      • Restarting
    • Input files
      • Always needed
      • Code units
      • Depending on what you are setting up
    • Output files
      • Written every time
      • Written when tf is negative
      • Written for star relaxation runs
    • Jumping ahead on a wide orbit
      • Where this has been used
      • Turning it on
      • Choosing when to jump
      • How it works
      • Checking that a jump was sane
    • Looking at the output
      • Installing SPLASH
      • Reading StarSmasher snapshots
      • What to look at
      • Other tools
  • Tutorials
    • Relaxing a polytrope
      • Setting up
      • Build and run
      • Checking that it worked
      • Where to go next
    • Relaxing a star
      • What a relaxation run does
      • Judging whether the model is any good
      • Judging a model after release
      • Particle masses and equalmass
      • Neighbour number and nnopt
      • Cores and compact objects
      • A worked starting point
    • A collision
      • Relax the two stars
      • Set up the encounter
      • Run it
      • Where to go next
    • A corotating scan
      • What a scan run does
      • Setting one up
      • The schedule
      • Choosing the drag
      • Reading the output
      • Using a snapshot as initial conditions
      • Resuming freezes the separation
      • A worked example
      • Where to go next

Reference

  • Reference and defaults
    • Equations of motion
      • The standard constraint
      • The constraint StarSmasher uses instead
      • How many neighbours you actually get
      • What this costs
      • Why it is worth it
      • Dynamic softening for compact objects
      • Blackollider
    • sph.input
      • Time and output
      • The particles
      • Equation of state and physics
      • Relaxation
      • Orbit of the encounter
      • Compact object and black hole
      • Timestep control
      • Parallelism and GPUs
      • Units
      • Periodic box
      • Input files
      • Other settings
    • Settings by initialization script
      • 1es, a single polytrope
      • 1mc, a single polytrope with a compact core
      • 2cr, a corotating binary
      • bhe, an encounter with a supermassive black hole
      • bph, a binary plus a black hole
      • bps, a binary plus a single star
      • erg, a star from a stellar-evolution profile
      • hbs, a binary encountering a single star
      • hyp, two bodies on a Keplerian orbit
      • meq, a star whose particle-mass scheme varies with position
      • pbx, particles in a periodic box, read from a dump
      • res, a rescaling of an existing model
      • tri, a triple system
      • txt, particles laid out from an ASCII image
    • sph.init

Project

  • Test suite
    • Adding a test
  • About StarSmasher
    • Papers
    • Citing
    • Licence
    • Contact
  • Contributing
  • Frequently asked questions
StarSmasher
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© Copyright 2026, James C. Lombardi Jr. and contributors.

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