The disruption of globular star clusters in the galaxy: A comparative   analysis between Fokker-Planck and N-body models
  Recent N-body simulations have shown that there is a serious discrepancy between the results of the N-body simulations and the results of Fokker-Planck simulations for the evolution of globular and rich open clusters under the influence of the galactic tidal field. In some cases, the lifetime obtained by Fokker-Planck calculations is more than an order of magnitude smaller than those by N-body simulations. In this letter we show that the principal cause for this discrepancy is an over-simplified treatment of the tidal field used in previous Fokker-Planck simulations. We performed new Fokker-Planck calculations using a more appropriate implementation of the boundary condition of the tidal field. The implementation is only possible with anisotropic Fokker-Planck models, while all previous Fokker-Planck calculations rely on the assumption of isotropy. Our new Fokker-Planck results agree well with N-body results. Comparison of the two types of simulations gives a better understanding of the cluster evolution. 
Koji Takahashi and Simon Portegies Zwart (Tokyo)