\subsection{Choice of time-step size}
\label{ssec:timesteps}

When running \swift with cosmological time-integration switched on, the
time-stepping algorithm gets modified in two ways. An additional criterion is
used to limit the maximal distance a particle can move and the integer time-line
used for the time-steps changes meaning and represents jumps in scale-factor $a$, 
hence requiring an additional conversion.

\subsubsection{Maximal displacement}

to prevent particles from moving on trajectories that do not include
the effects of the expansion of the Universe, we compute a maximal
time-step for the particles based on their RMS peculiar motion and
mean inter-particle separation:
\begin{equation}
  \Delta t_{\rm cosmo} \equiv \mathcal{C}_{\rm RMS} \frac{a^2}{\sqrt{\frac{1}{N_{\rm p}}\sum_i | \mathbf{v}_i' |^2}} d_{\rm p},
  \label{eq:dt_RMS}
\end{equation}
where the sum runs over all particles of a species $p$,
$\mathcal{C}_{\rm RMS}$ is a free parameter, $N_{\rm p}$ is the number
of baryonic or non-baryonic particles, and $d_{\rm p}$ is the mean
inter-particle separation at redshift $0$ for the particle with the
lowest mass $m_i$ of a given species:
\begin{equation}
  d_{\rm baryons} \equiv \sqrt[3]{\frac{m_i}{\Omega_{\rm b} \rho_{\rm crit, 0}}}, \quad d_{\rm DM} \equiv \sqrt[3]{\frac{m_i}{\left(\Omega_{\rm m} - \Omega_{\rm b}\right) \rho_{\rm crit, 0}}}.
  \nonumber
\end{equation}
We typically use $\mathcal{C}_{\rm RMS} = 0.25$ and given the slow
evolution of this maximal time-step size, we only re-compute it every
time the tree is reconstructed.

We also apply an additional criterion based on the smoothing scale of
the forces computed from the top-level mesh.  In eq.~\ref{eq:dt_RMS},
we replace $d_{\rm p}$ by
$a_{\rm smooth} \frac{L_{\rm box}}{N_{\rm mesh}}$, where we used the
definition of the mesh parameters introduced earlier. Given the rather
coarse mesh usually used in \swift, this time-step condition rarely
dominates the overall time-step size calculation.

\subsubsection{Conversion from time to integer time-line} 

\begin{equation}
  \int_{a_n}^{a_{n+1}} H dt = \int_{a_n}^{a_{n+1}} \frac{da}{a} =
  \log{a_{n+1}} - \log{a_n}.
\end{equation}