Time-Dependent Dynamics of a Planar Galaxy Model

Sridhar, S and Nityananda, R (1990) Time-Dependent Dynamics of a Planar Galaxy Model. In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 245 (4). pp. 713-719.

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Abstract

Time-dependent models of collisionless stellar systems with harmonic potentials allowing for an essentially exact analytic description have recently been described. These include oscillating spheres and spheroids. This paper extends the analysis to time-dependent elliptic discs. Although restricted to two space dimensions, the systems are richer in that their parameters form a 10-dimensional phase space (in contrast to six for the earlier models). Apart from total energy and angular momentum, two additional conserved quantities emerge naturally. These can be chosen as the areas of extremal sections of the ellipsoidal region of phase space occupied by the system (their product gives the conserved volume). The present paper describes the construction of these models. An application to a tidal encounter is given which allows one to go beyond the impulse approximation and demonstrates the effects of rotation of the perturbed system on energy and angular-momentum transfer. The angular-momentum transfer is shown to scale inversely as the cube of the encounter velocity for an initial configuration of the perturbed galaxy with zero quadrupole moment.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Publisher:	John Wiley and Sons
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to John Wiley and Sons.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Joint Astronomy Programme
Date Deposited:	10 Jan 2011 11:30
Last Modified:	10 Jan 2011 11:30
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/34925

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