1995/10/25 by David Merritt, Merritt, David, Tema Fridman +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9510132
uuencoded gziped PostScript, 11 pages including figures
arxiv created 1995/10/25 · openalex publication_date 1995/10/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recent work on the equilibrium and stability of ellipsoidal stellar systems is reviewed. The absence of constant-density cores in early-type galaxies implies that chaos and high-order resonances are generic features of the motion in triaxial stellar systems. Bending instabilities are now well understood and may provide the answers to a number of long-standing riddles, including the absence of highly flattened elliptical galaxies and the formation of galactic bulges. Some preliminary results on instabilities in two-integral oblate models are presented.