On the Global Structure of Self-gravitating Disks for Softened Gravity

Abstract

Effects of gravitational softening on the global structure of self-gravitating disks in centrifugal equillibrium are examined in relation to hydrodynamical/gravitational simulations. The one-parameter spline softening proposed by Hernquist & Katz is used. It is found that if the characteristic size of a disk, r, is comparable or less than the gravitational softening length, epsilon, then the cross section of the simulated disk is significantly larger than that of a no-softening (Newtonian) disk with the same mass and angular momentum. We furthermore demonstrate that if r is less than or about epsilon/2 then the scaling relation r proportional to epsilon^3/4 holds for a given mass and specific angular momentum distribution with mass. Finally we compare some of the theoretical results obtained in this and a previous paper with the results of numerical Tree-SPH simulations and find qualitative agreement.