Related papers: A statistical method for measuring the Galactic po…
Understanding the spiral arms of the Milky Way (MW) remains a key open question in galactic dynamics. Tidal perturbations, such as the recent passage of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy (Sgr), could play a significant role in exciting them. We…
The use of statistical methods to model gravitational systems is crucial to physics practice, but the extent to which thermodynamics and statistical mechanics genuinely apply to these systems is a contentious issue. This paper provides new…
Within the hierarchical framework for galaxy formation, merging and tidal interactions are expected to shape large galaxies to this day. While major mergers are quite rare at present, minor mergers and satellite disruptions - which result…
In classical Hamiltonian theories, entropy may be understood either as a statistical property of canonical systems, or as a mechanical property, that is, as a monotonic function of the phase space along trajectories. In classical mechanics,…
We introduce the emPDF (Empirical Distribution Function), a novel dynamical modeling method that infers the gravitational potential from kinematic tracers with optimal statistical efficiency under the minimal assumption of steady state.…
Stochastic thermodynamics provides the framework to analyze thermodynamic laws and quantities along individual trajectories of small but fully observable systems. If the observable level fails to capture all relevant degrees of freedom,…
We study tidal dissipation in stars with masses in the range $0.1-1.6 M_\odot$ throughout their evolution, including turbulent effective viscosity acting on equilibrium tides and inertial waves in convection zones, and internal gravity…
This letter highlights the entropy exchange phenomenon in a coupled binary inter-correlating system following Haldane's non-linear statistical correlation. A unique coupling between a classical and a quantum-like system at the marginal…
Mergers and tidal interactions between massive galaxies and their dwarf satellites are a fundamental prediction of the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter cosmology. These events are thought to provide important observational diagnostics of nonlinear…
The Gibbs sampler (a.k.a. Glauber dynamics and heat-bath algorithm) is a popular Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm which iteratively samples from the conditional distributions of a probability measure $\pi$ of interest. Under the…
The comprehension of stratified flows is important for geophysical and astrophysical applications. The Weak Wave Turbulence theory aims to provide a statistical description of internal gravity waves propagating in the bulk of such flows.…
We consider the AQUAL theory - a theory of modified gravity capable of resolving the missing mass problem - and study its predictions for micro gravity tests at the gravitational saddle points of the Solar system. We report that the AQUAL…
In many applications, the two-dimensional trajectories of fluid particles are available, but little is known about the underlying flow. Oceanic floats are a clear example. To extract quantitative information from such data, one can measure…
Recent analyses of the Pal 5 and GD-1 tidal streams suggest that the inner dark matter halo of the Milky Way is close to spherical, in tension with predictions from collisionless N-body simulations of cosmological structure formation. We…
We analyze stellar streams in action-angle coordinates combined with recent local direct acceleration measurements to provide joint constraints on the potential of our Galaxy. Our stream analysis uses the Kullback-Leibler divergence with a…
Entropy is a fundamental thermodynamic quantity indicative of the accessible degrees of freedom in a system. While it has been suggested that the entropy of a mesoscopic system can yield nontrivial information on emergence of exotic states,…
Stellar streams are sensitive probes of the Milky Way's gravitational potential. The mean track of a stream constrains global properties of the potential, while its fine-grained surface density constrains galactic substructure. A precise…
Since the Newtonian gravitation is largely used to model with success the structures of the universe, such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies, for example, a way to probe and constrain alternative theories, in the weak field limit, is to…
The missing mass problem has not been solved decisively yet. Observations show that if gravity is to be modified, then the MOND theory is its excellent approximation on galactic scales. MOND suggests an adjustments of the laws of physics in…
We present a new theoretical population synthesis model (the Galaxy Model) to examine and deal with large amounts of data from surveys of the Milky Way and to decipher the present and past structure and history of our own Galaxy. We assume…