Related papers: Resonant relaxation in globular clusters
We demonstrate the existence of an enhanced rate of angular momentum relaxation in nearly Keplerian star clusters, such as those found in the centers of galactic nuclei containing massive black holes. The enhanced relaxation arises because…
Stars bound to a supermassive black hole interact gravitationally. Persistent torques acting between stellar orbits lead to the rapid resonant relaxation of the orbital orientation vectors ("vector" resonant relaxation) and slower…
In the vicinity of a massive black hole, stars move on precessing Keplerian orbits. The mutual stochastic gravitational torques between the stellar orbits drive a rapid reorientation of their orbital planes, through a process called vector…
In nuclear star clusters, the potential is governed by the central massive black hole, so that stars move on nearly Keplerian orbits and the total potential is almost stationary in time. Yet, the deviations of the potential from the…
The orbits of stars close to a massive black hole are nearly Keplerian ellipses. Such orbits exert long term torques on each other, which lead to an enhanced angular momentum relaxation known as resonant relaxation. Under certain…
Vector resonant relaxation (VRR) is known to be the fastest gravitational process that shapes the geometry of stellar orbits in nuclear star clusters. This leads to the realignment of the orbital planes on the corresponding VRR time scale…
Globular clusters are dense stellar systems whose core slowly contracts under the effect of self-gravity. The rate of this process was recently found to be directly linked to the initial amount of velocity anisotropy: tangentially…
Resonant relaxation (RR) of orbital angular momenta occurs near massive black holes (MBHs) where the stellar orbits are nearly Keplerian and so do not precess significantly. The resulting coherent torques efficiently change the magnitude of…
Supermassive black holes dominate the gravitational potential in galactic nuclei. In these dense environments, stars follow nearly Keplerian orbits and see their orbital planes relax through the potential fluctuations generated by the…
Globular clusters contain a finite number of stars. As a result, they inevitably undergo secular evolution (`relaxation') causing their mean distribution function (DF) to evolve on long timescales. On one hand, this long-term evolution may…
The coherent torques between stars on orbits near massive black holes (MBHs) lead to resonant angular momentum relaxation. Due to the fact that orbits are Keplerian to good approximation, the torques efficiently change the magnitude of the…
Supermassive black holes in the centre of galaxies dominate the gravitational potential of their surrounding stellar clusters. In these dense environments, stars follow nearly Keplerian orbits, which get slowly distorted as a result of the…
Resonant relaxation (RR) is a rapid relaxation process that operates in the nearly-Keplerian potential near a massive black hole (MBH). RR dominates the dynamics of compact remnants that inspiral into a MBH and emit gravitational waves…
We present a first-principles theory of Resonant Relaxation (RR) of a low mass stellar system orbiting a more massive black hole (MBH). We first extend the kinetic theory of Gilbert (1968) to include the Keplerian field of a black hole of…
We investigate the rate of orbital orientation dilution of young stellar clusters in the vicinity of supermassive black holes. Within the framework of vector resonant relaxation, we predict the time evolution of the two-point correlation…
We present the results of a study aimed at exploring, by means of N-body simulations, the evolution of rotating multi-mass star clusters during the violent relaxation phase, in the presence of a weak external tidal field. We study the…
The long-term relaxation of rotating, spherically symmetric globular clusters is investigated through an extension of the orbit averaged Chandrasekhar non-resonant formalism. A comparison is made with the long-term evolution of the…
I consider a self-gravitating, N-body system assuming that the N constituents follow regular orbits about the center of mass of the cluster, where a central massive object may be present. I calculate the average over a characteristic…
Consider a system of point masses in a spherical potential. In such systems objects execute planar orbits covering two-dimensional rings or annuli, represented by the angular-momentum vectors, which slowly reorient due to the persistent…
We have developed a new simulation code aimed at studying the stellar dynamics of a galactic central star cluster surrounding a massive black hole. In order to include all the relevant physical ingredients (2-body relaxation, stellar mass…