Stability of spherically symmetric steady states in galactic dynamics against general perturbations (Q1347507)

The author of this interesting paper studies a classical problem in astrophysics, that is, to determine which equilibrium configurations of self-gravitating ensembles of mass points, such as galaxies or globular clusters, are stable. By neglecting collisions and relativistic effects, such ensembles are modelled by the Vlasov-Poisson system \[ \partial_tf+v\cdot \partial_xf-\partial_xU\cdot \partial_vf=0, \quad \triangle U=4\pi\rho, \quad \lim_{|x|\to\infty }U(t,x)=0, \] where \(\rho (t,x)=\int f(t,x,v)dv\), \(f=f(t,x,v)\geq 0\) denotes the density of the stars in phase space, \(t\in \mathbb R\) denotes time, \(x,v\in\mathbb R^3\) denote position and velocity, respectively, \(\rho \) is the spatial mass density, and \(U\) the gravitational potential. It is shown how certain steady states of the system arise as minimizers of an energy-Casimir functional, \[ \mathcal H_{\mathcal C}(f)= (1/2)\iint |v|^2f(x,v) dv dx-(8\pi)^{-1}\int |\nabla U_f(x)|^2 dx+\iint Q(f(x,v)) dv dx \] with a suitably chosen function \(Q\), and deduce nonlinear stability of these steady states against general perturbations. In previous investigations by Y. Guo and G. Rein, stability has been obtained only with respect to spherically symmetric perturbations. It is shown how to remove this nonphysical restriction.