Stability of gravitational systems and gravothermal catastrophe in astrophysics

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

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Astrophysics, Gravitational Collapse, Stellar Evolution, Systems Stability, Binary Stars, Distribution Functions, Stellar Motions, Thermodynamics

Scientific paper

The authors study the stability of a system of particles in pure gravitational interaction, the initial state being an Emden sphere. Gravitation is considered as the superposition of a mean field and a short-range contribution expressed by a Fokker-Planck collision term. It is shown that this term governs the time scale and is absolutely necessary for the instability. When gravitational collisions are present, the system is unstable if Antonov's criterion is fulfilled. But the time scale for the growth of the perturbation is of the order of the Hubble time for astrophysical systems. It is therefore concluded that systems like globular clusters or clusters of galaxies cannot have suffered a gravothermal catastrophe.

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