Related papers: On the long-term evolution of razor-thin galactic …
A kinetic equation for the collisional evolution of stable, bound, self gravitating and slowly relaxing systems is established, which is valid when the number of constituents is very large. It accounts for the detailed dynamics and self…
We review and complete the existing literature on the kinetic theory of spatially homogeneous systems with long-range interactions taking collective effects into account. The evolution of the system as a whole is described by the…
The secular evolution of an infinitely thin tepid isolated galactic disc made of a finite number of particles is investigated using the inhomogeneous Balescu-Lenard equation expressed in terms of angle-action variables. The matrix method is…
The secular evolution of an infinitely thin tepid isolated galactic disc made of a finite number of particles is described using the inhomogeneous Balescu-Lenard equation. Assuming that only tightly wound transient spirals are present in…
Finite-$N$ effects unavoidably drive the long-term evolution of long-range interacting $N$-body systems. The Balescu-Lenard kinetic equation generically describes this process sourced by ${1/N}$ effects but this kinetic operator exactly…
The long-term dynamics of long-range interacting $N$-body systems can generically be described by the Balescu-Lenard kinetic equation. However, for ${1D}$ homogeneous systems, this collision operator exactly vanishes by symmetry. These…
We review and complete the kinetic theory of spatially inhomogeneous stellar systems when collective effects (dressing of the stars by their polarization cloud) are neglected. We start from the BBGKY hierarchy issued from the Liouville…
We derive the kinetic equation that describes the secular evolution of a large set of particles orbiting a dominant massive object, such as stars bound to a supermassive black hole or a proto-planetary debris disc encircling a star. Because…
The unshielded nature of gravity means that stellar systems are inherently inhomogeneous. As a result, stars do not move in straight lines. This obvious fact severely complicates the kinetic theory of stellar systems because position and…
The time evolution of initially balanced, rapidly rotating models for an isolated disk of highly flattened galaxies of stars is calculated. The method of direct integration of the Newtonian equations of motion of stars over a time span of…
We demonstrate that in N-body simulations of isolated disc galaxies there is numerical vertical heating which slowly increases the vertical velocity dispersion and the disc thickness. Even for models with over a million particles in a disc,…
Recent observations have shown that star-forming galaxies like our own Milky Way evolve kinematically into ordered thin disks over the last ~8 billion years since z=1.2, undergoing a process of "disk settling." For the first time, we study…
We study the dynamical evolution of a stellar disk orbiting a massive black hole. We explore the role of two-body relaxation, mass segregation, stellar evolution and binary heating in affecting the disk evolution, and consider the impact of…
The secular thickening of a discrete self-gravitating galactic disc is investigated using the inhomogeneous multi-component Balescu-Lenard equation. The thick WKB limit for the diffusion and drift coefficients is found using the epicyclic…
Dynamical simulations are a fundamental tool for studying the secular evolution of disc galaxies. Even at their maximum resolution, they still follow a limited number of particles and typically resolve scales of the order of a few tens of…
The traditional Chandrasekhar picture of the slow relaxation of stellar systems assumes that stars' orbits are only modified by occasional, uncorrelated, two-body flyby encounters with other stars. However, the long-range nature of gravity…
Fluctuations in a stellar system's gravitational field cause the orbits of stars to evolve. The resulting evolution of the system can be computed with the orbit-averaged Fokker-Planck equation once the diffusion tensor is known. We present…
Using three-dimensional stellar kinematic data from simulated galaxies, we examine the efficacy of a Jeans equation analysis in reconstructing the total disk surface density, including the dark matter, at the "Solar" radius. Our simulation…
We present a flexible, detailed model for the evolution of galactic discs in a cosmological context since $z\approx 4$, including a physically-motivated model for radial transport of gas and stars within galactic discs. This expansion…
Stellar systems - star clusters, galaxies, dark matter haloes, and so on - are ubiquitous characters in the evolutionary tale of our Universe. This tutorial article is an introduction to the collective dynamical evolution of the very large…