Orbital divergence and relaxation in the gravitational N-body problem

DOI10.1023/A:1020472526203MaRDI QIDQ1863063zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors P. Hut, D. C. Heggie

Publication date 11 March 2003

Published in Journal of Statistical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0111015

zbMATH Keywords

few-body systemsgravityparticle orbitsrelaxation processes

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Celestial mechanics (70F15) Galactic and stellar dynamics (85A05)

Abstract: One of the fundamental aspects of statistical behaviour in many-body systems is exponential divergence of neighbouring orbits, which is often discussed in terms of Liapounov exponents. Here we study this topic for the classical gravitational N-body problem. The application we have in mind is to old stellar systems such as globular star clusters, where N~10^6, and so we concentrate on spherical, centrally concentrated systems with total energy E<0. Hitherto no connection has been made between the time scale for divergence (denoted here by t_e) and the two-body relaxation time scale (t_r), even though both may be calculated by consideration of two-body encounters. In this paper we give a simplified model showing that divergence in phase space is initially roughly exponential, on a timescale proportional to the crossing time (defined as a mean time for a star to cross from one side of the system to another). In this phase t_e is much less than t_r, if N is not too small (i.e. N is much more than about 30). After several e-folding times, the model shows that the divergence slows down. Thereafter the divergence (measured by the energies of the bodies) varies with time as t^{1/2}, on a timescale nearly proportional to the familiar two-body relaxation timescale, i.e. t_e ~ t_r in this phase. These conclusions are illustrated by numerical results.

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