Related papers: Dynamical friction in cuspy galaxies
It is well known that a large fraction of galaxies have cuspy luminosity profiles in their central regions, at least within the observational resolution. In such cases, the often used, simplified, local approximation for the dynamical…
Dynamical friction is the process responsible for matter transport toward the inner regions of galaxies in form of massive objects, like intermediate mass black holes, globular clusters and small satellite galaxies. While very bright…
For a rigid model satellite, Chandrasekhar's dynamical friction formula describes the orbital evolution quite accurately, when the Coulomb logarithm is chosen appropriately. However, it is not known if the orbital evolution of a real…
The main goal of this paper is to set up a numerical laboratory for the study of the slow evolution of the density and of the pressure tensor profiles of an otherwise collisionless stellar system, as a result of the interactions with a…
Dynamical friction leads to an orbital decay of massive objects like young compact star clusters or Massive Black Holes in central regions of galaxies. The dynamical friction force can be well approximated by Chandrasekhar's standard…
The dynamical friction experienced by a body moving in a gaseous medium is different from the friction in the case of a collisionless stellar system. Here we consider the orbital evolution of a gravitational perturber inside a gaseous…
The evolution of a small satellite inside a more massive truncated isothermal spherical halo is studied using both the Theory of Linear Response for dynamical friction and N-Body simulations. The analytical approach includes the effects of…
In the framework of the fluctuation-dissipation approach to dynamical friction, we derive an expression giving the orbital energy exchange experienced by a compound body as it moves interacting with a non homogeneous discrete background.…
The motion of a point like object of mass $M$ passing through the background potential of massive collisionless particles ($m << M$) suffers a steady deceleration named dynamical friction. In his classical work, Chandrasekhar assumed a…
We present a dynamical friction model based on Chandrasekhar's formula that reproduces the fast inspiral and stalling experienced by satellites orbiting galaxies with a large constant density core. We show that the fast inspiral phase does…
Numerical simulations of the dynamical friction suffered by a star cluster near the Galactic center have been performed with a parallelized tree code. Gerhard (2001) has suggested that dynamical friction, which causes a cluster to lose…
A fully analytical formulation is developed to make dynamical friction modeling more realistic. The rate for a satellite to decay its orbit in a host galaxy halo is often severely overestimated when applying ChandraSekhar's formula without…
We study the interplay between mass-loss and dynamical friction (DF) on the orbital decay of the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy in the potential of the Milky Way (MW). Using a simplified single particle approach combined with a mass-loss…
The timescale for galaxies within merging dark matter halos to merge with each other is an important ingredient in galaxy formation models. Accurate estimates of merging timescales are required for predictions of astrophysical quantities…
We construct numerical models of mildly triaxial elliptical galaxies with central density cusps. Using a technique we call ``adiabatic squeezing'', we begin with a spherical gamma=1 Hernquist model and apply a drag to the velocities of the…
We study the dynamical response of extended systems, hosts, to smaller systems, satellites, orbiting around the hosts using extremely high-resolution N-body simulations with up to one billion particles. This situation corresponds to minor…
We present a new semi-analytic model for dynamical friction based on Chandrasekhar's formalism. The key novelty is the introduction of physically motivated, radially varying, maximum and minimum impact parameters. With these, our model…
An introductory exposition of Chandrasekhar's gravitational dynamical friction, appropriate for an undergraduate class in mec hanics, is presented. This friction results when a massive particle moving through a ``sea'' of much lighter star…
In this paper we study the infall, by dynamical friction, of rigid "satellites" taken in a variety of initial configurations and models. We thus measure how dynamical friction depends on the density concentration and on the pressure…
Many astrophysical problems, ranging from structure formation in cosmology to dynamics of elliptical galaxies, refer to slow processes of evolution of essentially collisionless self-gravitating systems. In order to determine the relevant…