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Dynamics of triaxial galaxies with a central density cusp

Christos Siopis, Henry E. Kandrup

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/0202188

Abstract

Cuspy triaxial potentials admit a large number of chaotic orbits, which moreover exhibit extreme "stickiness" that makes the process of chaotic mixing surprisingly inefficient. Environmental effects, modeled as noise and/or periodic driving, help accelerate phase space transport but probably not as much as in simpler potentials. This could mean that cuspy triaxial ellipticals cannot exist as time-independent systems.

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