Elegant users forum

Hello Michael,

To define a canonical kick element, such as KQUD and KSEXT, we need to provide the N_KICKS parameter. What does this parameter exactly mean? For example, if N_KICKS = 18 and INTEGRATION_ORDER =4, does this mean we split the element into 6 slices first, and then apply the 4th order symplectic integration which involves 3 kicks. How about N_KICKS=10 and INTEGRATION_ORDER =4 where N_KICKS cannot be divided by 3 evenly, in this case how many slices is the element split into?

Thanks!

CSun

CSun,

* For order=2, there is just one kick per slice. So N_KICKS is both the number of kicks and the number of slices.

* For order=4, there are three kicks and four drifts per slice. So elegant uses int(N_KICKS/4) slices, each with 3 kicks. In this case N_KICKS is misleading. It's really the number of integration drifts.

--Michael