Abstract
Also archived in: arXiv:astro-ph/0405351 v2 19 May 2004 Chandrasekhar's theory of stellar encounters predicts a dependence of the Brownian motion of a massive particle on the velocity distribution of the perturbing stars. One consequence is that the expectation value of the massive object's kinetic energy can be different from that of the perturbers. This effect is shown to be modest however, and substantially smaller than claimed in a recent study based on a more approximate treatment of the encounter equations.
Publication Date
8-1-2005
Document Type
Article
Department, Program, or Center
School of Physics and Astronomy (COS)
Recommended Citation
Merritt, David, "A note on gravitational Brownian motion" (2005). Astrophysical Journal, vol. 628 (), part 1 p. 673-677. Accessed from
https://repository.rit.edu/article/184
Campus
RIT – Main Campus
Comments
This work was supported by grants AST-0071099 and AST-0206031 from the NSF and by grant MAG5-9046 from NASA. ISSN: 1538-4357