Galaxies and Saturn's rings: Gravitational analogues of nonneutral plasmas (open access)

Galaxies and Saturn's rings: Gravitational analogues of nonneutral plasmas

Orbit and collective dynamics in disk galaxies and in Saturn's rings are gravitational analogues of those occurring in nonneutral plasmas. The interesting problems for such ''gravitational plasmas'' are analogous to single-disk studies of transverse dynamics in particle beams. Of particular interest are various orbit-resonances with spiral density and bending waves in these disks which are analogous to electrostatic waves in nonneutral beam plasmas. The background physics, terminology and results of astrophysical investigations in these fields are surveyed in this paper. 53 refs., 19 figs., 1 tab.
Date: April 25, 1985
Creator: Mark, J.W.K.
System: The UNT Digital Library