A Note on Gravitational Brownian Motion

Abstract

Chandrasekhar's theory of stellar encounters predicts a dependence of the Brownian motion of a massive particle on the velocity distribution of the perturbing stars. One consequence is that the expectation value of the massive object's kinetic energy can be different from that of the perturbers. This effect is shown to be modest however, and substantially smaller than claimed in a recent study based on a more approximate treatment of the encounter equations.

7 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Brownian Motion of a Massive Binary
• Systolic and Hyper-Systolic Algorithms for the Gravitational N-Body Problem, with an Application to Brownian Motion
• Brownian Motion in Gravitationally-Interacting Systems

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• Dynamical constraints on the origin of the young B-stars in the Galactic center
• Eccentric disc instability in stellar discs formed from inspiraling gas clouds in the Galactic Centre
• Hunting A Wandering Supermassive Black Hole in M31 Halo -- Hermitage of Black Hole
• Generation of gravitational waves and tidal disruptions in clumpy galaxies
• Gravitational Brownian motion as inhomogeneous diffusion: black hole populations in globular clusters
• Black Hole Motion as Catalyst of Orbital Resonances