Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
1996-08-25
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
To appear in Apj, Vol 470, Oct 20, 11 pages, 7 figures, Postscript (or GIF) version available at http://grape.c.u-tokyo.ac.j
Scientific paper
10.1086/178007
A number of globular clusters appear to have undergone core collapse, in the sense that their predicted collapse time is much shorter than their current age. Simulations using gas models and Fokker-Planck approximation have shown that the central density of a globular cluster after the collapse undergoes nonlinear oscillation with large amplitude (gravothermal oscillation). However, whether such an oscillation actually takes place in a real $N$-body system has remained unsolved, because an $N$-body simulation with a sufficiently high resolution would have required the computing resource of the order of several Gflops$\cdot$years. In the present paper, we report the result of such a simulation, performed on a dedicated special-purpose computer GRAPE-4. We simulated the evolution of isolated point-mass systems with up to 32,768 particles. The largest number of particles reported previously is 10,000. We confirmed that gravothermal oscillation takes place in an $N$-body system. The expansion phase shows all signatures that are considered as the evidences of the gravothermal nature of the oscillation. At the maximum expansion, the core radius is $\sim 1$\% of the half-mass radius for the run with 32,768 particles. The maximum core size $r_c$ depends on $N$, as $
No associations
LandOfFree
Post-Collapse evolution of globular clusters does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Post-Collapse evolution of globular clusters, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Post-Collapse evolution of globular clusters will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-508233