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Relaxation Times in Strictly Disk Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

George B. Rybicki*
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass. 02138, U.S.A.

Abstract

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It is shown that the time of relaxation by particle encounters of self-gravitating systems in the plane interacting by 1/r2 forces is of the same order of magnitude as the mean orbit time. Therefore such a system does not have a Vlasov limit for large numbers of particles, unless appeal is made to some non-zero thickness of the disk. The relevance of this result to numerical experiments on galactic structure is discussed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1971

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