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Related papers: Dynamical Friction in Stellar Systems: an introduc…

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The motion of a point like object of mass M passing through the background potential of massive collisionless particles (m << M) suffers a steady deceleration named dynamic friction. In his classical work, Chandrasekhar assumed a Maxwellian…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2012-02-10 J. M. Silva , J. A. S. Lima , R. E. de Souza

With the goal to refine modelling of shell galaxies and the use of shells to probe the merger history, we develop a new method for implementing dynamical friction in test-particle simulations of radial minor mergers. The friction is…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2011-03-23 Ivana Ebrova , Bruno Jungwiert , Gabriela Canalizo , Nicola Bennert , Lucie Jilkova

We use the Chandrasekhar formalism and direct N-body simulations to study the effect of dynamical friction on a test object only slightly more massive than the field stars, orbiting a spherically symmetric background of particles with a…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-22 Emiliano Alessandrini , Barbara Lanzoni , Paolo Miocchi , Luca Ciotti , Francesco R. Ferraro , -

The static friction between crystalline surfaces separated by a molecularly thin layer of adsorbed molecules is calculated using molecular dynamics simulations. These molecules naturally lead to a finite static friction that is consistent…

Materials Science · Physics 2009-11-07 Gang He , Mark O. Robbins

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-05-17 Linhao Ma , Philip F. Hopkins , Luke Zoltan Kelley , Claude-André Faucher-Giguère

Numerical simulations of the dynamical friction suffered by a star cluster near the Galactic center have been performed with a parallelized tree code. Gerhard (2001) has suggested that dynamical friction, which causes a cluster to lose…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Sungsoo S. Kim , Mark Morris

The dynamical friction experienced by a body moving in a gaseous medium is different from the friction in the case of a collisionless stellar system. Here we consider the orbital evolution of a gravitational perturber inside a gaseous…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 F. J. Sanchez-Salcedo , A. Brandenburg

We derive a formalism, within the theory of linear response, for the analysis of the interaction of a satellite (the perturber) with a spherical galaxy whose equilibrium is described by a one-particle distribution function. We compute the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 M. Colpi , A. Pallavicini

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 G. Bertin , T. Liseikina , F. Pegoraro

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…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2014-04-02 Manuel Arca-Sedda , Roberto Capuzzo-Dolcetta

We present a rigorous calculation of the dynamical friction force exerted on a spherical massive perturber moving through an infinite homogenous system of field stars. By calculating the shape and mass of the polarization cloud induced by…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-06-23 O. Esquivel , B. Fuchs

We derive an analytical model for the so-called phenomenon of `resonant dynamical friction', where a disc of stars around a super-massive black hole interacts with a massive perturber, so as to align its inclination with the disc's…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-11-18 Yonadav Barry Ginat , Taras Panamarev , Bence Kocsis , Hagai B. Perets

Context. Merging compact objects such as binary black holes provide a promising probe for the physics of dark matter (DM). The gravitational waves emitted during inspiral potentially allow one to detect DM spikes around black holes. This is…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-10-23 Moritz S. Fischer , Laura Sagunski

It is well-established that strong bars rotating in dense halos generally slow down as they lose angular momentum to the halo through dynamical friction. Angular momentum exchanges between the bar and halo particles take place at…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 J. A. Sellwood , Victor P. Debattista

The dynamic evolution of galactic bars in standard $\Lambda$CDM models is dominated by angular momentum loss to the dark matter haloes via dynamical friction. Traditional approximations to dynamical friction are formulated using the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-04-29 Rimpei Chiba , Ralph Schönrich

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-08-17 James A. Petts , Justin I. Read , Alessia Gualandris

We study binary stars moving through a uniform dark matter background and experiencing dynamical friction. The centre-of-mass motion of the pairs is taken into account. We derive formulas and timescales for the secular evolution of the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-02-25 Nicolas Esser

The evolution of planets, stars and even galaxies is driven, to a large extent, by dynamical friction of gravitational origin. There is now a good understanding of the friction produced by extended media, either collisionless of fluid-like.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-09-25 Rodrigo Vicente , Vitor Cardoso , Miguel Zilhão

The process of momentum and energy transfer between a massive body and a background medium it is moving through is known as dynamical friction (DF). It is key to our understanding of many astrophysical systems. We present a series of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-08-20 Ben Morton , Sadegh Khochfar , Jose Oñorbe

The theory of superfluid dark matter is characterized by self-interacting sub-eV particles that thermalize and condense to form a superfluid core in galaxies. Massive black holes at the center of galaxies, however, modify the dark matter…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-05-24 Lasha Berezhiani , Giordano Cintia , Valerio De Luca , Justin Khoury