Long-term Evolution of Stellar Self-Gravitating System away from the Thermal Equilibrium: connection with non-extensive statistics

Abstract

With particular attention to the recently postulated introduction of a non-extensive generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics, we study the long-term stellar dynamical evolution of self-gravitating systems on timescales much longer than the two-body relaxation time. In a self-gravitating N-body system confined in an adiabatic wall, we show that the quasi-equilibrium 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.

4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.Lett