Models of cuspy triaxial stellar systems. I. Stability and chaoticity

Details Models of cuspy triaxial stellar systems. I. Stability and chaoticity Models of cuspy triaxial stellar systems. I. Stability and chaoticity

2012-04-24

arxiv.org/abs/1204.5428v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Galaxy Astrophysics

10 pages, 5 figures. The Article has been submitted for publication in Monthly Notices of the RAS by the Royal Astronomical So

Scientific paper

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 sets of initial conditions that resulted in models morphologically resembling E2, E3, E4 and E5 galaxies, respectively. Within each set, three different seed numbers were selected for the random number generator used to create the initial conditions, so that the three models of each set are statistically equivalent. We checked the stability of our models using the values of their central densities and of their moments of inertia, which turned out to be very constant indeed. The changes of those values were all less than 3 per cent over one Hubble time and, moreover, we show that the most likely cause of those changes are relaxation effects in the numerical code. We computed the six Lyapunov exponents of nearly 5,000 orbits in each model in order to recognize regular, partially and fully chaotic orbits. All the models turned out to be highly chaotic, with less than 25 per cent of their orbits being regular. We conclude that it is quite possible to obtain cuspy triaxial stellar models that contain large fractions of chaotic orbits and are highly stable. The difficulty to build such models with the method of Schwarzschild (1979) should be attributed to the method itself and not to physical causes.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Models of cuspy triaxial stellar systems. I. Stability and chaoticity 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 Models of cuspy triaxial stellar systems. I. Stability and chaoticity, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Models of cuspy triaxial stellar systems. I. Stability and chaoticity will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-520561