The determination of the gravitational potential of arbitrary mass distribution (Q1822533)

Numerical computation of the gravitational potential for arbitrary mass distribution in spherical coordinates is considered. It is possible to determine the potential from the spherical expansion of the Poisson integral with 1/2 \(n^ 2NML\) operations - i.e. with a number proportional to the mesh number NML multiplied by the square of the Legendre functions of index n. The computation of the potential based on the solution of the Poisson differential equation is discussed.