Very long-term relaxation of harmonic 1D self-gravitating systems
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| author | Tep, Kerwann Fouvry, Jean-Baptiste Pichon, Christophe |
| author_facet | Tep, Kerwann Fouvry, Jean-Baptiste Pichon, Christophe |
| contents | One-dimensional self-gravitating systems admit genuine thermodynamical equilibria. For systems with strictly monotonic orbital frequency profile, the Landau and Balescu-Lenard theories predict a relaxation time scaling linearly with the number of particles, $N$, in agreement with simulations. Yet, these theories become ill-posed for degenerate frequency profiles, as is the case in the harmonic potential, where all particles share the exact same mean orbital frequency. Using an exact collision-driven 1D integrator, we investigate numerically the self-consistent relaxation of 1D harmonic self-gravitating systems. We show that harmonic systems relax on a timescale that grows quadratically with $N$. We show that systems that are only partially degenerate display the same quadratic scaling for low $N$, but transition to the linear, non-degenerate behaviour for larger $N$. The larger the fraction of degenerate orbits, the larger the value of $N$ at which this transition of dynamical regime occurs. Finally, we explore the dynamics of fully non-degenerate systems, albeit with finite radial support: we confirm that their relaxation time scales linearly with $N$, though with a substantially larger prefactor than in non-compact systems. Astrophysically, this investigation should offer some new clues on the dynamics of density cores, as in the center of dwarf galaxies. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_11238 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Very long-term relaxation of harmonic 1D self-gravitating systems Tep, Kerwann Fouvry, Jean-Baptiste Pichon, Christophe Astrophysics of Galaxies Statistical Mechanics One-dimensional self-gravitating systems admit genuine thermodynamical equilibria. For systems with strictly monotonic orbital frequency profile, the Landau and Balescu-Lenard theories predict a relaxation time scaling linearly with the number of particles, $N$, in agreement with simulations. Yet, these theories become ill-posed for degenerate frequency profiles, as is the case in the harmonic potential, where all particles share the exact same mean orbital frequency. Using an exact collision-driven 1D integrator, we investigate numerically the self-consistent relaxation of 1D harmonic self-gravitating systems. We show that harmonic systems relax on a timescale that grows quadratically with $N$. We show that systems that are only partially degenerate display the same quadratic scaling for low $N$, but transition to the linear, non-degenerate behaviour for larger $N$. The larger the fraction of degenerate orbits, the larger the value of $N$ at which this transition of dynamical regime occurs. Finally, we explore the dynamics of fully non-degenerate systems, albeit with finite radial support: we confirm that their relaxation time scales linearly with $N$, though with a substantially larger prefactor than in non-compact systems. Astrophysically, this investigation should offer some new clues on the dynamics of density cores, as in the center of dwarf galaxies. |
| title | Very long-term relaxation of harmonic 1D self-gravitating systems |
| topic | Astrophysics of Galaxies Statistical Mechanics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.11238 |