Chaos around the superposition of a monopole and a thick disk

TL;DR

This study investigates how the thickness of a galactic disk influences the chaotic orbits of particles under gravity, confirming that thicker disks reduce chaos but symmetry-breaking perturbations can increase it.

Contribution

It extends previous thin-disk models to thick disks, demonstrating the impact of disk thickness on orbital chaos through comprehensive numerical analysis.

Findings

Thicker disks attenuate chaotic behavior of orbits.

Breaking reflection symmetry enhances chaos.

Results confirm robustness of previous thin-disk findings.

Abstract

We extend recent investigations on the integrability of oblique orbits of test particles under the gravitational field corresponding to the superposition of an infinitesimally thin disk and a monopole to the more realistic case, for astrophysical purposes, of a thick disk. Exhaustive numerical analyses were performed and the robustness of the recent results is confirmed. We also found that, for smooth distributions of matter, the disk thickness can attenuate the chaotic behavior of the bounded oblique orbits. Perturbations leading to the breakdown of the reflection symmetry about the equatorial plane, nevertheless, may enhance significantly the chaotic behavior, in agreement with recent studies on oblate models.