Overview

pNbody is a parallelized python module toolbox designed to manipulate and display interactively very large N-body systems.

Its oriented object approach allows to perform complicated manipulation with only very few commands.

As python is an interpreted language, the user can load an N-body system and explore it interactively using the python interpreter. However, pNbody can also be used in complex python scripts.

The module contains facilities to generate initial conditions of idealized self-gravitating collision-less models through the Jeans equations or by properly sampling distribution functions. It is complemented by graphical functionalities to create maps of physical values of the system, like density, temperature, velocities, metallicity, or surface brightness maps, to list a few. Stereo rendering is also implemented.

pNbody is not limited by file format. Users can redefine in a parameter file how to read its favorite format.

Its parallel (MPI/mpi4py) extension make it work on computer clusters without being limited by memory consumption. It has already been tested with hundreds of millions of particles.