A brief introduction to symplectic integrators and recent results

The author begins with a brief synopsis about Hamiltonian systems and symplectic maps. A symplectic integrator is a symplectic map {phi}(q,p;t) that systematically approximates the time t flow of a Hamiltonian system. Systematic means: (1) in time step, t, i.e. the error should vanish as some power of the time step, and (2) in order of approximation, i.e. one would like a hierarchy of such {phi} that have errors that vanish as successively higher powers of the time step. At present the authors known two general types of symplectic integrators: (1) implicit integrators that are derived from a generating function or from algebraic conditions on Runge-Kutta schemes, and (2) explicit integrators that are derived from integrable Hamiltonians or from algebraic conditions on Runge-Kutta schemes.