DIVERGENCE OF NEARBY TRAJECTORIES FOR THE GRAVITATIONAL N-BODY PROBLEM

被引:29
作者
KANDRUP, HE [1 ]
机构
[1] OAKLAND UNIV,DEPT PHYS,ROCHESTER,MI 48063
关键词
Galaxies: clustering; Numerical methods;
D O I
10.1086/169425
中图分类号
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号
0704 ;
摘要
This paper considers the Hamiltonian flow of a collection of N self-gravitating Newtonian point masses, viewed as a geodesic flow on an appropriate curved but conformally flat 3N-dimensional manifold. It is proved that, with respect to the natural Euclidean measure, the probability that a random perturbation δqa of a random geodesic ua with comparable kinetic and potential energies will feel a positive curvature K(u, δq) decreases exponentially to zero as N → ∞. This suggests, but unfortunately does not prove, that at least for short times, large self-gravitating systems should exhibit a "mixing-type" or "chaotic" behavior.
引用
收藏
页码:420 / 425
页数:6
相关论文
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[12]  
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