Comment on "N-body simulations of gravitational dynamics" by Dehnen and Read

Abstract

It is shown that the historical summary of the growth in size of N-body simulations as measured by particle number in this review is missing some key milestones. Size matters, because particle number with appropriate force smoothing is a key method to suppress unwanted discreteness, so that the initial conditions and equations of motion are appropriate to growth by gravitational instability in a Poisson-Vlasov system appropriate to a Universe with dark matter. Published strong constraints on what can be done are not included in the review.