SCYON Abstract

Received on October 20 2003

Dissipationless collapse of a set of N massive particles

AuthorsF. Roy(1) and J. Perez(1,2)
Affiliation(1) Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées, Unité de Mathématiques Appliquées, 32 Bd Victor, 75015 Paris, France
(2) Laboratoire de l'Univers et de ses THéories, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92350 Meudon, France
Accepted byMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Contactperez@ensta.fr
URL
Links

Abstract

The formation of self-gravitating systems is studied by simulating the collapse of a set of N particles which are generated from several distribution functions. We first establish that the results of such simulations depend on N for small values of N. We complete a previous work by Aguilar & Merritt concerning the morphological segregation between spherical and elliptical equilibria. We find and interpret two new segregations: one concerns the equilibrium core size and the other the equilibrium temperature. All these features are used to explain some of the global properties of self-gravitating objects: origin of globular clusters and central black hole or shape of elliptical galaxies.