Isotropic-Nematic Phase Transitions in Gravitational Systems. II. Higher Order Multipoles

Takács, Ádám and Kocsis, Bence (2018) Isotropic-Nematic Phase Transitions in Gravitational Systems. II. Higher Order Multipoles. ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, 856 (2). ISSN 1538-4357

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Abstract

The gravitational interaction among bodies orbiting in a spherical potential leads to the rapid relaxation of the orbital planes' distribution, a process called vector resonant relaxation. We examine the statistical equilibrium of this process for a system of bodies with similar semimajor axes and eccentricities. We extend the previous model of Roupas et al. by accounting for the multipole moments beyond the quadrupole, which dominate the interaction for radially overlapping orbits. Nevertheless, we find no qualitative differences between the behavior of the system with respect to the model restricted to the quadrupole interaction. The equilibrium distribution resembles a counterrotating disk at low temperature and a spherical structure at high temperature. The system exhibits a firstorder phase transition between the disk and the spherical phase in the canonical ensemble if the total angular momentum is below a critical value. We find that the phase transition erases the high-order multipoles, i.e., smallscale structure in angular momentum space, most efficiently. The system admits a maximum entropy and a maximum energy, which lead to the existence of negative temperature equilibria.

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