Probing Yukawian gravitational potential by numerical simulations. I. Changing N-body codes

Abstract

In the weak field limit general relativity reduces, as is well known, to the Newtonian gravitation. Alternative theories of gravity, however, do not necessarily reduce to Newtonian gravitation; some of them, for example, reduce to Yukawa-like potentials instead of the Newtonian potential. Since the Newtonian gravitation is largely used to model with success the structures of the universe, such as for example galaxies and clusters of galaxies, a way to probe and constrain alternative theories, in the weak field limit, is to apply them to model the structures of the universe. In the present study, we consider how to probe Yukawa-like potentials using N-body numerical simulations.