Long-Term Evolution of Stellar Self-Gravitating Systems Away from Thermal Equilibrium: Connection with Nonextensive Statistics
Abstract
With particular attention to the recently postulated introduction of a nonextensive generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics, we study the long-term stellar dynamical evolution of self-gravitating systems on time scales much longer than the two-body relaxation time. In a self-gravitating N-body system confined in an adiabatic wall, we show that the quasiequilibrium sequence arising from the Tsallis entropy, so-called stellar polytropes, plays an important role in characterizing the transient states away from the Boltzmann-Gibbs equilibrium state.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- May 2003
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.181101
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0303415
- Bibcode:
- 2003PhRvL..90r1101T
- Keywords:
-
- 98.10.+z;
- 04.40.-b;
- 05.70.Ln;
- Stellar dynamics and kinematics;
- Self-gravitating systems;
- continuous media and classical fields in curved spacetime;
- Nonequilibrium and irreversible thermodynamics;
- Astrophysics;
- Condensed Matter - Statistical Mechanics;
- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
- E-Print:
- 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.Lett