This paper deals mainly with the application of the second-order symplectic implicit midpoint rule and its symmetric compositions to a post-Newtonian Hamiltonian formulation with canonical spin variables in relativistic compact binaries. The midpoint rule, as a basic algorithm, is directly used to integrate the completely canonical Hamiltonian system. On the other hand, there are symmetric composite methods based on a splitting of the Hamiltonian into two parts: the Newtonian part associated with a Kepler motion, and a perturbation part involving the orbital post-Newtonian and spin contributions, where the Kepler flow has an analytic solution and the perturbation can be calculated by the midpoint rule. An example is the second-order mixed leapfrog symplectic integrator with one stage integration of the perturbation flow and two semistage computations of the Kepler flow at every integration step. Also, higher-order composite methods such as the Forest-Ruth fourth-order symplectic integrator and its optimized algorithm are applicable. Various numerical tests including simulations of chaotic orbits show that the mixed leapfrog integrator is always superior to the midpoint rule in energy accuracy, while both of them are almost equivalent in computational efficiency. Particularly, the optimized fourth-order algorithm compared with the mixed leapfrog scheme provides good precision and needs no expensive additional computational time. As a result, it is worth performing a more detailed and careful examination of the dynamical structure of chaos and order in the parameter windows and phase space of the binary system.

• Received 23 June 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.82.124040