SYMPLECTIC INTEGRATION OF NONLINEAR HAMILTONIAN-SYSTEMS

There exist several standard numerical methods for integrating ordinar y differential equations. However, if one is interested in integration of Hamiltonian systems, these methods can lead to wrong results. This is due to the fact that these methods do not explicitly preserve the so-called 'symplectic condition' (that needs to be satisfied for Hamil tonian systems) at every integration step. In this paper, we look at v arious methods for integration that preserve the symplectic condition.