STRONG THREE-BODY INTERACTIONS IN CENTERS OF GALAXIES

Joanna Anosova, University of Texas at Austin

It has long been believed that most of celestial objects are dominated by single centers of attraction in them. But recently, however, a lot of violent and/or complicated phenomena are discovered to take place in every part of the Universe in every scale. Many of these phenomena are caused by multiple centers of attraction: planetary rings and shepherding satellites, unusually large eccentricities of millisecond pulsars, accretion discs of various scales, pecular structures of single galaxies, interacting galaxies, etc. We believe that various features of celestial objects can be realized by simply assuming the existence of dominating two centers of attraction. This review shows results of numerical studies of strong Newtonian interactions of bodies in centers of stellar systems. In the frame of the general three-body problem, Professor T.A.Agekian, J.Anosova, V. Orlov, and N. Zavalov obtain these results in the St.-Petersburg University during many years. Recently, J.Anosova, A. Anandarao, K. Tanikawa and F. Benedict apply these results for numerical studies of structures of galaxies.

We study numerically the dynamical evolution of models of stellar systems, which contain two-heavy centers of gravity and extended shells inside and around orbits of these binaries. Initially the binary components surrounded by numerous small-mass particles with small initial velocities. It is shown that at some moment of time there is a collapse of these particles on to the heavier components of the binary. We have the strong interactions of bodies at this time. Frequently, the 'gravitational slingshot' effect occurs. Further in time, some part of particles, which initially were outside the binary orbit escape from the system. Other particles are captures by binary components forming in the center a 'dumb-bell' bar. During evolution of our models different kinds of structures of systems often are very similar to the observed structures of galaxies: spiral and elliptical galaxies, interacting galaxies, different kinds of flows and jets. Totally systems are expanding. Formation of different kinds of structures of galaxies depends on motions of particles with respect to the line of apses of the nuclear binary:

1. In the case of almost orthogonal motion (the gravitational slingshot effect), these particles escape from systems and before an escape form open expanding spirals;

2. In the alternative case, these particles are captured by the binary components;

3. In the intermediate cases, particles form different kinds of flows like jets, rings, close spirals, etc.