Realistic triaxial density--potential--force profiles for stellar systems and dark matter halos

Abstract

Popular models for describing the luminosity-density profiles of dynamically hot stellar systems (e.g., Jaffe, Hernquist, Dehnen) were constructed to match the deprojected form of de Vaucouleurs' $R^{1/4}$ light-profile. However, we now know that elliptical galaxies and bulges display a mass-dependent range of structural profiles. To compensate this, the model in Terzic & Graham was designed to closely match the deprojected form of Sersic $R^{1/n}$ light-profiles, including deprojected exponential light-profiles and galaxies with partially depleted cores. It is thus applicable for describing bulges in spiral galaxies, dwarf elliptical galaxies, both ``power-law'' and ``core'' elliptical galaxies, also dark matter halos formed from $\Lambda$CDM cosmological simulations. In this paper, we present a new family of triaxial density-potential-force triplets, which generalizes the spherical model reported in Terzic & Graham to three dimensions. If the (optional) power-law core is present, it is a 5-parameter family, while in the absence of the core it reduces to 3 parameters. The isodensity contours in the new family are stratified on confocal ellipsoids and the potential and forces are expressed in terms of integrals which are easy to evaluate numerically. We provide the community with a suite of numerical routines for orbit integration, which feature: optimized computations of potential and forces for this family; the ability to run simulations on parallel platforms; and modular and easily editable design.

Accepted for publication in the MNRAS. 13 pages, including 6 figures

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• Orbital Instabilities in a Triaxial Cusp Potential
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• Deprojecting Sersic Profiles for Arbitrary Triaxial Shapes: Robust Measures of Intrinsic and Projected Galaxy Sizes
• Invoking the virial theorem to understand the impact of (dry) mergers on the $M_{\mathrm{bh}}$-$\sigma$ relation
• Potential Black Hole Seeding of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 4424 via an Infalling Star Cluster
• Order and chaos in a new 3D dynamical model describing motion in non axially symmetric galaxies
• Total mass distributions of Sersic galaxies from photometry $&$ cent\ ral velocity dispersion
• Order and chaos in a three dimensional galaxy model