The MOCCA code is improved version of the Monte Carlo, which originally has been written by Giersz and his collaborators (Giersz et al. 2008). The name MOCCA stands for MOnte Carlo Cluster simulAtor.

The MOCCA code is currently one of the most advanced codes which is able to simulate real size star clusters and at the same time, it allows to have a full dynamical history of the evolution of all stars in the system. It follows the star cluster evolution closely to N-body codes but is much faster Giersz et al. 2013. The MOCCA code is able to follow the evolution of exotic objects, i. e. blue stragglers stars, cataclysmic variables, compact binaries, with details and thus it is a suitable tool to perform meaningful analysis and comparisons with observations of exotic star cluster objects Hypki et al. 2013.

The MOCCA code is being actively developed at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The quality of the MOCCA code was already proven many times to be very high in numerous peer-reviewed publications.

Features of the MOCCA code

• multiple stellar populations (with different metallicities for every population)
• initial conditions generated with MCluster interface
• detail simulations of real size star clusters (even > 2M stars initially)
• 2-body relaxation treatment
• dynamical interactions for binary-single and binary-binary performed with the Fewbody code (Fregeau et al. 2004)
• single and binary stellar evolution performed with SSE/BSE codes (Hurley et al. 2000, Hurley et al. 2002)
• arbitrary metallicity
• possible initial models: uniform & isotropic, Plummer, King, Politropic, segregated Plummer
• initial binary parameters i.e. Kroupa eigenevolution, thermal distribution
• initial mass function with arbitrary break mass
• arbitrary min. and max. star masses, max semi-major axes
• treatment of escaper stars with simple energy criterion or according to Fukushige & Heggie procedures (Fukushige & Heggie 2000)
• natal kicks for NS and BH formation w/wo fallback
• and many more...

MOCCA initial conditions

MOCCA initial conditions are build with Mcluster code

MOCCA output files

One of the best ways to find out whether MOCCA simulations can be useful for your research is to read about the MOCCA output files. In this way one can find out what MOCCA files provide out-of-the box and what could be computed with additional scripts.

MOCCA output files page contain information about the MOCCA output files and all its columns.

License & Download

The MOCCA code is a quasi-open source code.

Contact us, suggest a collaboration and we will be more than happy to share the code.

Acknowledgements

The project is partially supported by Polish Ministry of Sciences and Higher Education through the grants 92/N-ASTROSIM/2008/0, N N203 38036 and Polish National Science Center grant DEC-2011/01/N/ST9/06000