DIRECT COLLISIONAL SIMULATION OF 10000 PARTICLES PAST CORE COLLAPSE

A collisional N-body simulation using NBODY5 On a Single GRAY YMP proc essor is followed well into the post-collapse regime. This is presentl y one of the largest particle numbers of all such models published, bu t some data for an even larger N produced by using special-purpose com puters have recently been presented. In contrast to previous ensemble- averaged N-body simulations the noise here is low enough just to compa re this one single run with the expectations from statistical models b ased on the Fokker-Planck approximation. Agreement is as good as could be expected for the case of the evolution of the Lagrangian radii, ra dial and tangential velocity dispersions and various core quantities. We discuss briefly approximate models to understand the number and the energy of escapers and the question of gravothermal core oscillations ; although the system exhibits postcollapse oscillations they turn out to be directly binary driven and we cannot prove the existence of a g ravothermal expansion at this particle number. Finally in a detailed e xamination of the wandering of the density centre we find, in contrast to some previous studies, a clear long-time period of the order of ap proximately 14 half-mass crossing times.