Violent Relaxation of Spherical Stellar Systems.pdfVIP

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 9 7 0 2 0 0 2 v 1 3 1 J a n 1 9 9 7 Violent Relaxation of Spherical Stellar Systems Motokazu Takizawa and Shogo Inagaki Department of Astronomy, Faculty of Science, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-01 (Received ;accepted ) 1 Abstract Violent relaxation process of spherical stellar systems is examined by numer- ical simulations of shell model. The collapse of uniform density sphere both with and without external force is investigated. It is found that time vari- ation of mean gravitational potential field induced by external force makes the system closer to Lynden-Bell distribution. Our result imply that sys- tems which are gravitationary affected by other systems may approach the Lynden-Bell distribution. Key words: Collisionless stellar dynamics; Elliptical galaxies; Violent relaxation 2 1 Introduction Violent relaxation is a mechanism proposed to explain a similarity and smooth- ness of the observed light distribution of elliptical galaxies. This relaxation process is caused by explicitly time-dependant mean gravitational potential field. Its typical timescale is much shorter than two-body relaxation time and comparable with dynamical time. According to Lynden-Bell (1967), it is expected that the coarse-grained entropy of systems becomes maximum through violent relaxation in ideal cases and that Lynden-Bell distribution can be established. The Lynden- Bell distribution is given by f?(ε) = η exp{?β(ε? μ)} 1 + exp{?β(ε? μ)} , (1) where f?(ε) is coarse-grained distribution function, ε is energy per unit mass, and η, β, μ are constants. In almost all cases, degeneracy can be neglected (f?(ε) ? η), so Lynden-Bell distribution is approximated by the Maxwell- Boltzmann distribution: f?(ε) = A exp(?βε), (2) where A = η exp(βμ) = constant. However, in numerical simulations so far of one dimensional gravitational N-body systems (sheet systems), they did not reach Lynden-bell distribution through violent relaxation ( Cuperman et al. 19