Related papers: Density cusps: restrictions on non-axisymmetric mo…
We study the self-consistent, linear response of a galactic disc to non-axisymmetric perturbations in the vertical direction as due to a tidal encounter, and show that the density distribution near the disc mid-plane has a strong impact on…
Mass models of galactic disks traditionally rely on axisymmetric density and rotation curves, paradoxically acting as if their most remarkable asymmetric features, such as lopsidedness or spiral arms, were not important. In this article, we…
We present an analytical model for the non-spherical collapse of overdense regions out of a Gaussian random field of initial cosmological perturbations. The collapsing region is treated as an ellipsoid of constant density, acted upon by the…
With the advent of galaxy surveys which provide large samples of galaxies or galaxy clusters over a volume comparable to the horizon size (SDSS-III, HETDEX, Euclid, JDEM, LSST, Pan-STARRS, CIP etc.) or mass-selected large cluster samples…
The deprojection of the surface brightness of axisymmetric galaxies is indeterminate unless the galaxy is seen edge-on. In practice, this problem is often circumvented by making ad hoc assumptions about the density distribution. However,…
Planet-forming disks are fundamental objects thought to be inherited from large scale rotation, through the conservation of angular momentum during the collapse of a prestellar dense core. We investigate the possibility for a protostellar…
We used the N-body code of Hernquist and Ostriker (1992) to build a dozen cuspy ({\gamma}\approx 1) triaxial models of stellar systems through dissipationless collapses of initially spherical distributions of 10^6 particles. We chose four…
Recently, observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed small stellar discs embedded in the nuclei of a number of ellipticals and S0s. In this paper we construct two-integral axisymmetric models for such systems. We calculate…
In this paper, the third of a series dedicated to the investigation of the nuclear properties of spiral galaxies, we have (i) modelled the WFPC2 F606W nuclear surface brightness profiles of 41 spiral galaxies presented in Carollo et al.…
Motivated by the finding that the observed surface brightness profile of many galactic nuclei are well fit by double-power-laws, we explore a range of spherical self-consistent dynamical models with this light profile. We find that the…
Using $N$-body simulations ($N\sim 10^6 - 10^7$), we examine how a non-axisymmetric dark halo affects the dynamical evolution of the structure in collisionless (stellar) discs. We demonstrate how the model parameters such as mass of the…
We report on the structure of the nuclear star cluster in the innermost 0.16 pc of the Galaxy as measured by the number density profile of late-type giants. Using laser guide star adaptive optics in conjunction with the integral field…
While clusters of galaxies are considered one of the most important cosmological probes, the standard spherical modelling of the dark matter and the intracluster medium is only a rough approximation. Indeed, it is well established both…
We study the azimuthal structure of the stellar disks of 18 face-on spiral galaxies, using K-band photometry to trace the stellar surface mass density. Assuming the disks are co-planar, we characterize their deviation from axisymmetry by…
In several previous investigations we presented models of triaxial stellar systems, both cuspy and non cuspy, that were highly stable and harboured large fractions of chaotic orbits. All our models had been obtained through cold collapses…
[Abridged] Recently we have found that a family of models of partially relaxed, anisotropic stellar systems, inspired earlier by studies of incomplete violent relaxation, exhibits some interesting thermodynamic properties. Here we present a…
Starless cores represent the initial stage of evolution toward (proto)star formation, and a subset of them, known as prestellar cores, with high density (~ 10^6 cm^-3 or higher) and being centrally concentrated are expected to be embryos of…
Schwarzschild models of a Plummer sphere were constructed and compared with analytical results to test the robustness of Schwarzschild's method and its efficiency in probing the degeneracy of the solution space. The method was then used to…
One way of recovering information about the initial conditions of the Universe is by measuring features of the cosmological density field which are preserved during gravitational evolution and galaxy formation. In this paper we study the…
Simulations of the clustering of cold dark matter yield dark-matter halos that have central density cusps, but observations of totally dark-matter dominated dwarf spheroidal galaxies imply that they do not have cuspy central density…