Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Oct 1996
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996uchi.rept.....m&link_type=abstract
Technical Report, Chicago Univ. Chicago, IL United States Dept. of Astronomy
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Boundary Conditions, Galaxies, Galactic Bulge, Nuclear Astrophysics, Boundary Value Problems, Collapse, Gravitational Fields, Many Body Problem, Nonlinearity
Scientific paper
Current research carried out with the help of the ASEE-NASA Summer Faculty Program, at NASA-Ames, is concentrated on the dynamics of nuclear regions of galaxies. From a dynamical point of view a galaxy is a collection of around 1011 stars like our Sun, each of which moves in the summed gravitational field of all the remaining stars. Thus galaxy dynamics becomes a self-consistent n-body problem with forces given by Newtonian gravitation. Strong nonlinearity in the gravitational force and the inherent nonlinearity of self-consistent problems both argue for a numerical approach. The technique of numerical experiments consis of constructing an environment in the computer that is as close as possible to the physical conditions in a real galaxy and then carrying out experiments much like laboratory experiments in physics or engineering, in this environment. Computationally, an experiment is an initial value problem, and a good deal of thought and effort goes into the design of the starting conditions that serve as initial values. Experiments are run at Ames because all the 'equipment' is in place-the programs, the necessary computational power, and good facilities for post-run analysis. Our goal for this research program is to study the nuclear regions in detail and this means replacing most of the galaxy by a suitable boundary condition to allow the full capability of numerical experiments to be brought to bear on a small region perhaps 1/1000 of the linear dimensions of an entire galaxy. This is an extremely delicate numerical problem, one in which some small feature overlook, can easily lead to a collapse or blow-up of the entire system. All particles attract each other in gravitational problems, and the 1/r2 force is: (1) nonlinear; (2) strong at short range; (3) long-range, and (4) unscreened at any distance.
No associations
LandOfFree
Dynamics of Nuclear Regions of Galaxies 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 Dynamics of Nuclear Regions of Galaxies, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Dynamics of Nuclear Regions of Galaxies will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1144319