Related papers: Violent Relaxation of Spherical Stellar Systems
Theory and simulations are used to study collisionless relaxation of a gravitational $N$-body system. It is shown that when the initial one particle distribution function satisfies the virial condition -- potential energy is minus twice the…
Violent relaxation has been proposed half a century ago to bear responsibility for non-collisional dynamics and formation of gravitationally bound systems of extended celestial objects (agglomeration of stars, galaxies, clusters of…
The term ``violent relaxation'' was coined by Donald Lynden-Bell as a memorable oxymoron describing how a stellar dynamical system relaxes from a chaotic initial state to a quasi-equilibrium. His analysis showed that this process is rapid,…
The statistical mechanical investigation of Violent Relaxation of phase space elements of different densities first derived by Lynden-Bell (1967) is re-examined. It is found that the mass independence of the equations of motion of Violent…
In this paper, we present our conclusions from the numerical study of the collapse of a destabilized collisionless stellar system. We use both direct integration of the Vlasov-Poisson equations and an N-body tree code to obtain our results,…
A spherical system with arbitrary mean velocities in the radial and transverse directions, but with zero dispersion of radial velocities, is considered as a model describing the violent relaxation of star clusters and galaxies. The model…
We discuss the statistical mechanics of violent relaxation in stellar systems following the pioneering work of Lynden-Bell (1967). The solutions of the gravitational Vlasov-Poisson system develop finer and finer filaments so that a…
Large scale structures in the Universe, ranging from globular clusters to entire galaxies, are the manifestation of relaxation to out-of-equilibrium states that are not described by standard statistical mechanics at equilibrium. Instead,…
Violent relaxation during the collapse of a galaxy halo is known to be incomplete in realistic cases such as cosmological infall or mergers. We adopt a physical picture of strong but short lived interactions between potential fluctuations…
N-body simulations of collisionless collapse have offered important clues to the construction of realistic stellar dynamical models of elliptical galaxies. Such simulations confirm and quantify the qualitative expectation that rapid…
N-body simulations of collisionless collapse have offered important clues to the construction of realistic stellar dynamical models of elliptical galaxies. Such simulations confirm and quantify the qualitative expectation that rapid…
The process of relaxation of a system of particles interacting with long-range forces is relevant to many areas of Physics. For obvious reasons, in Stellar Dynamics much attention has been paid to the case of 1/r^2 force law. However,…
The collapse of an isolated, uniform and spherical cloud of self-gravitating particles represents a paradigmatic example of a relaxation process leading to the formation of a quasi-stationary state in virial equilibrium. We consider several…
An isolated, initially cold and ellipsoidal cloud of self-gravitating particles represents a relatively simple system to study the effects of the deviations from spherical symmetry in the mechanism of violent relaxation. Initial deviations…
We study the gravitational collapse of an overdensity of nonrelativistic matter under the action of gravity and a chameleon scalar field. We show that the spherical collapse model is modified by the presence of a chameleon field. In…
We study, using $N$-body simulation, the shape evolution in gravitational collapse of cold uniform spherical system. The central interest is on how the deviation from spherical symmetry depends on particle number $N$. By revisit of the…
In $N$-body systems with long-range interactions mean-field effects dominate over binary interactions (collisions), so that relaxation to thermal equilibrium occurs on time scales that grow with $N$, diverging in the $N\to\infty$ limit.…
In the mean field limit, isolated gravitational systems often evolve towards a steady state through a violent relaxation phase. One question is to understand the nature of this relaxation phase, in particular the role of radial…
I use N-body simulations with two mass species of particles to demonstrate that disk galaxy simulations are subject to collisional relaxation at a higher rate than is widely assumed. Relaxation affects the vertical thickness of the disk…
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…