Collisionless Relaxation in Galactic Dynamics and the Evolution of Long Range Order
Abstract
This talk provides a critical assessment of collisionless galactic dynamics, focusing on the interpretation and limitations of the collisionless Boltzmann equation and the physical mechanisms associated with collisionless relaxation. Numerical and theoretical arguments are presented to motivate the idea that the evolution of a system far from equilibrium should be interpreted as involving nonlinear gravitational Landau damping, which implies a greater overall coherence and remembrance of initial conditions than is implicit in the conventional theory of violent relaxation.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9707103,
title = {Collisionless Relaxation in Galactic Dynamics and the Evolution of Long Range Order},
author = {Henry E. Kandrup},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9707103},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
20 pages, plain latex, no macros required, no figures a talk presented at the 1997 Florida Workshop on Nonlinear Astronomy and Physics, to appear in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences