Related papers: Smooth potential chaos and N-body simulations
This paper summarises a numerical investigation of the statistical properties of orbits evolved in `frozen,' time-independent N-body realisations of smooth, time-independent density distributions, allowing for 10^(2.5)<N<10^(5.5). Two…
This paper continues a numerical investigation of orbits evolved in `frozen,' time-independent N-body realisations of smooth time-independent density distributions corresponding to both integrable and nonintegrable potentials, allowing for…
We revisit the r\^{o}le of discreteness and chaos in the dynamics of self-gravitating systems by means of $N$-body simulations with active and frozen potentials, starting from spherically symmetric stationary states and considering the…
Using direct $N$-body simulations of self-gravitating systems we study the dependence of dynamical chaos on the system size $N$. We find that the $N$-body chaos quantified in terms of the largest Lyapunov exponent $\Lambda_{\rm max}$…
This paper examines discreteness effects in nearly collisionless N-body systems of charged particles interacting via an unscreened r^-2 force, allowing for bulk potentials admitting both regular and chaotic orbits. Both for ensembles and…
Self-consistent N-body simulations are efficient tools to study galactic dynamics. However, using them to study individual trajectories (or ensembles) in detail can be challenging. Such orbital studies are important to shed light on global…
We study the stability of a family of spherical equilibrium models of self-gravitating systems, the so-called $\gamma-$models with Osipkov-Merritt velocity anisotropy, by means of $N-$body simulations. In particular, we analyze the effect…
Dissipationless N-body models of rotating galaxies, iso-energetic to a non-rotating model, are examined as regards the mass in regular and in chaotic motion. The values of their spin parameters $\lambda$ are near the value $\lambda=0.22$ of…
By tracking the divergence of two initially close trajectories in phase space in an Eulerian approach to forced turbulence, the relation between the maximal Lyapunov exponent $\lambda$, and the Reynolds number $Re$ is measured using direct…
We investigate the old problem of the fast relaxation of collisionless $N$-body systems which are collapsing or perturbed, emphasizing the importance of (non-collisional) discreteness effects. We integrate orbit ensembles in fixed external…
The orbits of stars in galaxies are generically chaotic: the chaotic behavior arises in part from the intrinsically grainy nature of a potential that is composed of point masses. Even if the potential is assumed to be smooth, however,…
Violent relaxation (VR) is often regarded as the mechanism leading stellar systems to collisionless meta equilibrium via rapid changes in the collective potential. We investigate the role of chaotic instabilities on single particle orbits…
Recent numerical results seem to suggest that in certain regimes of typical particle velocities the gravitational $N-$body problem (for $3\leq N\lesssim 10^3$) is intrinsically less chaotic when the post-Newtonian (PN) force terms are…
The largest Lyapunov exponent is widely used to diagnose chaos in gravitational dynamics, but in mixed phase spaces and finite-N systems it does not always provide a complete description of orbital complexity and phase-space transport.…
This paper summarises a number of new, potentially significant, results, obtained recently by the author and his collaborators, which impact on various issues related to the gravitational N-body problem, both Newtonianly and in the context…
We study chaotic orbits of conservative low--dimensional maps and present numerical results showing that the probability density functions (pdfs) of the sum of $N$ iterates in the large $N$ limit exhibit very interesting time-evolving…
We provide appropriate tools for the analysis of dynamics and chaos for one-dimensional systems with periodic boundary conditions. Our approach allows for the investigation of the dependence of the largest Lyapunov exponent on various…
The dynamical justifications which lie at the basis of an effective Statistical Mechanics for self gravitating systems are formulated, analyzing some among the well known obstacles thought to prevent a rigorous Statistical treatment. It is…
Self-gravitating systems of $N$ particles are chaotic. We wonder how chaotic the Galaxy is, and what the consequences are. We therefore simulate the dynamical evolution of a galaxy-scale distribution of point masses in order to measure the…
We study some new universal aspects of diffusion in chaotic systems, especially such having very large Lyapunov coefficients on the chaotic (indecomposable, topologically transitive) component. We do this by discretizing the chaotic…