Stirring N-body systems II: Necessary conditions for the dark matter attractor

TL;DR

This paper investigates the underlying mechanisms behind the attractor in collisionless N-body systems, demonstrating that energy exchange during perturbations in a dynamic potential is crucial for its emergence.

Contribution

It provides evidence that energy exchange, rather than radial infall or orbit instability, is essential for the attractor in N-body system evolution.

Findings

The attractor persists without radial infall or orbit instability.

Energy exchange in a dynamic potential is key to the attractor's formation.

Radial and isotropic velocity kicks do not produce the attractor.

Abstract

We study the evolution of the phase-space of collisionless N-body systems under repeated stirrings or perturbations, which has been shown to lead to a convergence towards a limited group of end states. This so-called attractor was previously shown to be independent of the initial system and environmental conditions. However the fundamental reason for its appearance is still unclear. It has been suggested that the origin of the attractor may be either radial infall (RI), the radial orbit instability (ROI), or energy exchange which, for instance, happens during violent relaxation. Here we examine the effects of a set of controlled perturbations, referred to as `kicks', which act in addition to the standard collisionless dynamics by allowing pre-specified instantaneous perturbations in phase-space. We first demonstrate that the attractor persists in the absence of RI and ROI by forcing the system to expand. We then consider radial velocity kicks in a rigid potential and isotropic velocity kicks, since there are no energy exchanges in these two recipes of kicks. We find that these kicks do not lead to the attractor, indicating that the energy exchange in a dynamic potential is indeed the physical mechanism responsible for the attractor.