Contents

• Introduction
  • Objectives of the Study
  • Outline of the Thesis
• Formation of Large-scale Structures
  • Matter Content of the Universe
  • Origin of Structures
    • Historical Perspective
    • Gravitational Instability
    • Generation of Perturbations
  • Peculiar Velocity Fields
  • The Local Group and the Local Neighbourhood
• The Dynamics of Galaxies
  • Simplifying Assumptions
  • Hamilton's principle
  • Equations of Motion
    • The Lagrangian
    • The Orbits
    • Calculating the Equation of Motion
• Numerical Methods
  • Introduction
  • Integration
  • Optimization
    • Method of Steepest Descent
    • Method of Conjugate Gradients
    • The Newton-Raphson Method
    • Secant Method
• Orbits of Galaxies
  • Implementation of the AVP
    • The AVP Code
    • Trial Orbits
  • N-body Algorithm
    • Small-N Systems
    • The NBODY1 Algorithm
    • N-body Solution of the Trial Orbits
  • First Evaluation of Optimizing Methods
  • Orbits of Galaxies in the LG and the LN
    • The System Parameters
    • Extended Evaluation of Optimizing Methods
    • A Physical Discussion
• Review of the AVP
  • Areas of Application
  • Different Implementations
• Conclusions
  • A brief Summary
  • Suggestions for Future Work
• References
• The AVP Sourcecode
  • Framework
  • Optimizing Methods
  • Modules
  • Input Files
• Addition to the NBODY1 Code
• About this document ...