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arXiv · astro-ph/9510132

Equilibrium and Stability of Elliptical Galaxies

David Merritt·Tema Fridman
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Abstract

Recent work on the equilibrium and stability of ellipsoidal stellar systems is reviewed. The absence of constant-density cores in early-type galaxies implies that chaos and high-order resonances are generic features of the motion in triaxial stellar systems. Bending instabilities are now well understood and may provide the answers to a number of long-standing riddles, including the absence of highly flattened elliptical galaxies and the formation of galactic bulges. Some preliminary results on instabilities in two-integral oblate models are presented.

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David Merritt, Tema Fridman. 1995-10-25. Equilibrium and Stability of Elliptical Galaxies. https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9510132

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