相关论文: Energy relaxation in galaxies induced by an extern…
[abridged] Energy relaxation around a massive black hole (MBH) is key to establishing the dynamical state of galactic nuclei, and the nature of close stellar interactions with the MBH. The standard description of relaxation as diffusion…
Collisional relaxation describes the stochastic process with which a self-gravitating system near equilibrium evolves in phase space due to the fluctuating gravitational field of the system. The characteristic timescale of this process is…
In nuclear star clusters, the potential is governed by the central massive black hole, so that stars move on nearly Keplerian orbits and the total potential is almost stationary in time. Yet, the deviations of the potential from the…
The traditional Chandrasekhar picture of the slow relaxation of stellar systems assumes that stars' orbits are only modified by occasional, uncorrelated, two-body flyby encounters with other stars. However, the long-range nature of gravity…
With the aim of distinguishing between possible physical mechanisms acting on galaxies when they fall into clusters, we study the properties of the gas and the stars in a sample of 422 emission-line galaxies from EDisCS in different…
We demonstrate the existence of an enhanced rate of angular momentum relaxation in nearly Keplerian star clusters, such as those found in the centers of galactic nuclei containing massive black holes. The enhanced relaxation arises because…
During the merger of two galaxies, the resulting system undergoes violent relaxation and seeks stable equilibrium. However, the details of this evolution are not fully understood. Using Illustris simulation, we probe two physically related…
The distribution of galaxies on the mass-size plane as a function of redshift or environment is a powerful test for galaxy formation models. Here we use integral-field stellar kinematics to interpret the variation of the mass-size…
The driving of turbulence in galaxies is deeply connected with the physics of feedback, star formation, outflows, accretion, and radial transport in disks. The velocity dispersion of gas in galaxies therefore offers a promising…
ABBREVIATED ABSTRACT: This paper summarises an investigation of the effects of weak friction and noise in time-independent, nonintegrable potentials which admit both regular and stochastic orbits. The aim is to understand the qualitative…
It is often assumed that galaxies cannot generate large-scale coherent star- forming activity without some organizing agent, such as spiral density waves, bars, large-scale instabilities, or external perturbations due to encounters with…
We investigate a model of galaxy clusters in which the hot intracluster gas is efficiently heated by dynamical friction (DF) of galaxies. We allow for both subsonic and supersonic motions of galaxies and use the gravitational drag formula…
Mergers between gas--rich disks and less--massive dwarf galaxies are studied using numerical simulation. As the orbit of a satellite decays through dynamical friction, the primary disk develops large-amplitude spirals in response to its…
Galaxy groups and clusters are the most massive collapsed structures in the Universe. Those structures are formed by collapsing with other smaller structures. Groups and cluster mergers provide an appropriate environment for the evolution…
We present a suite of six high-resolution chemo-dynamical simulations of isolated galaxies, spanning observed disk-dominated environments on the star-forming main sequence, as well as quenched, bulge-dominated environments. We compare and…
Supermassive black holes in the centre of galaxies dominate the gravitational potential of their surrounding stellar clusters. In these dense environments, stars follow nearly Keplerian orbits, which get slowly distorted as a result of the…
The evolution of star clusters is determined by several internal and external processes. Here we focus on two dominant internal effects, namely energy exchange between stars through close encounters (two-body relaxation) and mass-loss of…
Violent relaxation -- the protocluster dynamical response to the expulsion of its residual star forming gas -- is a short albeit crucial episode in the evolution of star clusters and star cluster systems. Because it is heavily driven by…
In previous works, we have shown that stars in the Orion and the Lagoon Nebula Clusters, and simulations of collapsing clouds, exhibit constant velocity dispersion as a function of mass, a result described by Lynden-Bell 50 years ago as an…
The coherent torques between stars on orbits near massive black holes (MBHs) lead to resonant angular momentum relaxation. Due to the fact that orbits are Keplerian to good approximation, the torques efficiently change the magnitude of the…