Related papers: Dynamical friction in flattened systems: A numeric…
How fast a satellite decays its orbit depends on how slowly its mass is lost by tide. Motivated by inner halo satellite remnants like the Sgr and Omega Cen, we develop fully analytical models to study the orbital decay and tidal massloss of…
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…
Using analytic calculations and N-body simulations we show that in constant density (harmonic) cores, sinking satellites undergo an initial phase of very rapid (super-Chandrasekhar) dynamical friction, after which they experience no…
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 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…
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 carry out a set of self-consistent N-body calculations to compare the decay rates of satellite dwarf galaxies orbiting a disc galaxy embedded in a dark matter halo (DMH). We consider both spherical and oblate axisymmetric DMHs of aspect…
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.…
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…
We consider the intermediate mass-ratio inspiral of a stellar-mass compact object with an intermediate-mass black hole that is surrounded by a dark matter density spike. The interaction of the inspiraling black hole with the dark matter…
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…
We investigate the orbital decay of a massive BH embedded in a dark matter halo and a stellar bulge, using both analytical and numerical simulations with the aim of developing and validating a reliable dynamical friction (DF) correction…
We examine the distributions of eccentricities of orbits within mass distributions like those we see for galaxies and clusters. A comprehensive understanding of these orbital properties is essential to calculate the rates of physical…
We consider the orbital evolution of satellites in galaxy mergers, focusing on the evolution of eccentricity. Using a large suite of N-body simulations, we study the phenomenon of satellite orbital radialization -- a profound increase in…
In the past several years high resolution kinematic data sets from Milky Way satellite galaxies have confirmed earlier indications that these systems are dark matter dominated objects. Further understanding of what these galaxies reveal…
In this paper we treat the problem of the dynamical friction decay of a massive object moving in an elliptical galaxy with a cuspidal inner distribution of the mass density. We present results obtained by both self-consistent, direct…
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…
A longstanding problem in galactic simulations is to resolve the dynamical friction (DF) force acting on massive black hole particles when their masses are comparable to or less than the background simulation particles. Many sub-grid models…
We investigate the effect of a density gradient on Chandrasekhar's dynamical friction formula based on the method of 2-body encounters in the local approximation. We apply these generalizations to the orbit evolution of satellite galaxies…
Dynamical friction implies a consistency check on any system where dark matter particles are hypothesised to explain orbital dynamics requiring more mass under Newtonian gravity than is directly detectable. Introducing the assumption of a…