Dynamics of triaxial galaxies with a central density cusp

Abstract

Cuspy triaxial potentials admit a large number of chaotic orbits, which moreover exhibit extreme "stickiness" that makes the process of chaotic mixing surprisingly inefficient. Environmental effects, modeled as noise and/or periodic driving, help accelerate phase space transport but probably not as much as in simpler potentials. This could mean that cuspy triaxial ellipticals cannot exist as time-independent systems.

4 pages, to appear in the Proceedings of the 5th Hellenic Astronomical Society Conference, held in Fodele, Crete, Greece, 20-22 September 2001