Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2012-03-11
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Minor changes; some typos and notational inconsistencies corrected
Scientific paper
The origin of equilibrium gravitational configurations is sought in terms of the stability of their trajectories, as described by the curvature of their Lagrangian configuration manifold. We focus on the case of spherical systems, which are integrable in the collisionless (mean field) limit despite the apparent persistence of local instability of trajectories even as $N \rightarrow \infty$. It is shown that when the singularity in the potential is removed, a null scalar curvature is associated with an effective, averaged, equation of state describing dynamically relaxed equilibria with marginally stable trajectories. The associated configurations are quite similar to those of observed elliptical galaxies and simulated cosmological halos. This is the case because a system starting far from equilibrium finally settles in a state which is integrable when unperturbed, but where it can most efficiently wash out perturbations. We explicitly test this interpretation by means of direct simulations.
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