Chaos around the superposition of a monopole and a thick disk

Abstract

We extend recent investigations on the integrability of oblique orbits of test particles under the gravitational field corresponding to the superposition of an infinitesimally thin disk and a monopole to the more realistic case, for astrophysical purposes, of a thick disk. Exhaustive numerical analyses were performed and the robustness of the recent results is confirmed. We also found that, for smooth distributions of matter, the disk thickness can attenuate the chaotic behavior of the bounded oblique orbits. Perturbations leading to the breakdown of the reflection symmetry about the equatorial plane, nevertheless, may enhance significantly the chaotic behavior, in agreement with recent studies on oblate models.