Equilibrium and Stability of Elliptical Galaxies
Astrophysics
2007-05-23 v1
Abstract
Recent work on the equilibrium and stability of ellipsoidal stellar systems is reviewed. The absence of constant-density cores in early-type galaxies implies that chaos and high-order resonances are generic features of the motion in triaxial stellar systems. Bending instabilities are now well understood and may provide the answers to a number of long-standing riddles, including the absence of highly flattened elliptical galaxies and the formation of galactic bulges. Some preliminary results on instabilities in two-integral oblate models are presented.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9510132,
title = {Equilibrium and Stability of Elliptical Galaxies},
author = {David Merritt and Tema Fridman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9510132},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
uuencoded gziped PostScript, 11 pages including figures