Symplectic coarse graining approach to the dynamics of spherical self-gravitating systems

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of the phase-space distribution function around slightly perturbed stationary states and the process of violent relaxation in the context of the dissipationless collapse of an isolated spherical self-gravitating system. By means of the recently introduced symplectic coarse graining technique, we obtain an effective evolution equation that allows us to compute the scaling of the frequencies around a stationary state, as well as the damping times of Fourier modes of the distribution function, with the magnitude of the Fourier k−vectors themselves. We compare our analytical results with N -body simulations.