Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I Potential Theory
- Part II Systems of Particles
- Part III Collisionless Systems
- 9 The Collisionless Boltzmann Equation and the Jeans Theorem
- 10 The Jeans Equations and the Tensor Virial Theorem
- 11 Projected Dynamics
- 12 Modeling Techniques 1: Phase-Space Approach
- 13 Modeling Techniques 2: Moments Approach
- 14 Modeling Techniques 3: From ρ to f
- Appendix Mathematical Background
- References
- Index
14 - Modeling Techniques 3: From ρ to f
from Part III - Collisionless Systems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part I Potential Theory
- Part II Systems of Particles
- Part III Collisionless Systems
- 9 The Collisionless Boltzmann Equation and the Jeans Theorem
- 10 The Jeans Equations and the Tensor Virial Theorem
- 11 Projected Dynamics
- 12 Modeling Techniques 1: Phase-Space Approach
- 13 Modeling Techniques 2: Moments Approach
- 14 Modeling Techniques 3: From ρ to f
- Appendix Mathematical Background
- References
- Index
Summary
In this last chapter, we discuss a final theoretical step of the moments approach illustrated in Chapter 13: under the assumption that the macroscopic profiles (e.g., density and velocity dispersion) of each component are known, there is a possibility of recovering the phase-space distribution function (DF) of a model and checking its positivity (i.e., verifying the model consistency). The problem of recovering the DF is in general a technically difficult inverse problem, and even when it is doable, unicity of the recovered DF is not guaranteed, so that a simple consistency analysis is quite problematic. Fortunately, there are special cases when (in principle) the DF can be obtained analytically (generally in integral form), and in these cases a few general and useful consistency conditions can be proved, such as the so-called global density slope–anisotropy inequality. The student is warned that this chapter is somewhat more technical than the others; however, the additional effort needed for its study will be well repaid by the understanding of some nontrivial results allowing for the construction of phase-space consistent collisionless stellar systems.
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- Introduction to Stellar Dynamics , pp. 281 - 295Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021