Force distribution in a randomly perturbed lattice of identical particles with $1/r^2$ pair interaction

In this paper I show how the statistics of the gravitational field is changed when the system is characterized by a non-uniform distribution of particles. I show how the distribution functions W(dF/dt) giving the joint probability that a test particle is subject to a force F and an associated rate of change of F given by dF/dt, are modified by inhomogeneity. Then I calculate the first moment of dF/dt to study the effects of inhomogenity on dynamical friction. Finally I test, ...

In this work, we study the probability distribution for the force and potential energy of a test particle interacting with $N$ point random sources in the limit $N\rightarrow\infty$. The interaction is given by a central potential $V(R)=k/R^{\delta-1}$ in a $ d$-dimensional euclidean space, where $R$ is the random relative distance between the source and the test particle, $\delta$ is the force exponent, and $k$ is the coupling parameter. In order to assure a well-defined lim...

In this paper I extend the results of Ahmad & Cohen (1973), regarding the study of the probability distribution of the stochastic force in homogeneous gravitational systems, to inhomogeneous gravitational ones. To this aim, I study the stochastic force distribution using N-body realizations of Plummer's spherically symmetric models. I find that the stochastic force distribution obtained for the evolved system is in good agreement with Kandrup's (1980) theory of stochastic for...

We discuss the distribution of the gravitational force created by a Poissonian distribution of field sources (stars, galaxies,...) in different dimensions of space d. In d=3, it is given by a Levy law called the Holtsmark distribution. It presents an algebraic tail for large fluctuations due to the contribution of the nearest neighbor. In d=2, it is given by a marginal Gaussian distribution intermediate between Gaussian and Levy laws. In d=1, it is exactly given by the Bernou...

The dynamics of infinite, asymptotically uniform, distributions of self-gravitating particles in one spatial dimension provides a simple toy model for the analogous three dimensional problem. We focus here on a limitation of such models as treated so far in the literature: the force, as it has been specified, is well defined in infinite point distributions only if there is a centre of symmetry (i.e. the definition requires explicitly the breaking of statistical translational ...

In this paper we extend Chandrasekhar and von Neumann's analysis of the statistics of the gravitational field to systems in which particles (e.g. stars, galaxies) are not homogeneously distributed. We derive a distribution function W({F},dF/dt) giving the joint probability that a test particle is subject to a force F and an associated rate of change of F given by dF/dt. We calculate the first moment of dF/dt to study the effects of inhomogenity on dynamical friction.

In this paper we extend Chandrasekhar and von Neumann's analysis of the statistics of the gravitational field to systems in which particles (e.g. stars, galaxies) are not homogeneously distributed. We derive a distribution function W(F,d F/dt) giving the joint probability that a test particle is subject to a force F and an associated rate of change of F given by d F/dt. We calculate the first moment of d F/dt to study the effects of inhomogenity on dynamical friction.

We have studied the distribution of forces in gravitational systems through numerical experiments. Data were taken from an N-body simulation in an expanding universe. Before clustering, the distribution of random forces was represented as a Holtsmark distribution; the nearest-neighbor distribution is also shown as a comparison. The analytical and simulation distributions are in good agreement. When clustering becomes strong, the simulation result showed that the contribution ...

We study the effect of Chandrasekhar and Holstmark's distribution of field fluctuations on the dynamics of N-body systems interacting via Coulomb or Newton gravitational force. We develop an approach based on statistical dynamics first principles whose mathematical framework is similar to the one used by Chandrasekhar and Holstmark for their field fluctuation theory. We use the Picard iteration method to approximate the Hamiltonian dynamics in the short time limit. Neglecting...

The nearest neighbor distribution (Chandrasekhar 1943) is generalized to fractal stellar systems.For such systems an asymptotic distribution of the magnitude of large random forces and a formula for the effective mean interparticle spacing are derived. It is shown that in the case of a power-law distribution of conditional density the derived asymptotic fully agrees with the results obtained in terms of a general approach. It is concluded that large random forces in a fractal...