Collisionless relaxation in gravitational systems: from violent relaxation to gravothermal collapse.
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 kinetic energy--the system quickly relaxes to a metastable state described quantitatively by the Lynden-Bell distribution with a cutoff. If the initial distribution function does not meet the virial requirement, the system undergoes violent oscillations, resulting in a partial evaporation of mass. The leftover particles phase-separate into a core-halo structure. The theory presented allows us to quantitatively predict the amount and the distribution of mass left in the central core, without any adjustable parameters. On a longer time scale tauG-N , collisionless relaxation leads to a gravothermal collapse.
Levin
Yan
Y
Instituto de Física, UFRGS, Caixa Postal 15051, CEP 91501-970, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Pakter
Renato
R
Rizzato
Felipe B
FB