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Self‐Consistent Gravitational Chaos a
Author(s) -
MERRITT DAVID,
VALLURI MONICA
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1998.tb08957.x
Subject(s) - physics , galaxy , astrophysics , black hole (networking) , gravitation , spin flip , galaxy merger , gravitational potential , astronomy , galaxy formation and evolution , computer network , routing protocol , routing (electronic design automation) , computer science , link state routing protocol
A bstract : The motion of stars in the gravitational potential of a triaxial galaxy is generically chaotic. However, the timescale over which the chaos manifests itself in the orbital motion is a strong function of the degree of central concentration of the galaxy. Here, chaotic diffusion rates are presented for orbits in triaxial models with a range of central density slopes and nuclear black‐hole masses. Typical diffusion times are found to be less than a galaxy lifetime in triaxial models where the density increases more rapidly than ∼ r −1 at the center, or which contain black holes with masses that exceed ∼0.1% of the galaxy mass. When the mass of a central black hole exceeds roughly 0.02 M gal, there is a transition to global stochasticity and the galaxy evolves to an axisymmetric shape in little more than a crossing time. This rapid evolution may provide a negative feedback mechanism that limits the mass of nuclear black holes to a few percent of the stellar mass of a galaxy.