GALACTIC DYNAMICS - APPLICATIONS AND NUMERICAL METHODS

Instructor: John Dubinski
E-mail: dubinski@cita.utoronto.ca

I would be happy to teach a mini-course on Galactic Dynamics with the theme of Applications and Numerical Methods:

• 1. Problems in galactic dynamics:
  • i) disks -- spiral structure, warps, disk heating
  • ii) dynamical friction
  • iii) interacting and merging galaxies -- elliptical galaxies
  • iv) accretion of mass (satellites) onto galaxies
  • v) violent relaxation - dissipationless collapse - formation of dark halos
• 2. Numerical Methods
  • i) N-body methods - PM codes, treecodes, self-consistent field methods
  • ii) parallel computing techniques and algorithms applied to N-bodies
  • iii) building galaxies - realistic galaxy potentials - self-consistent models from distribution functions - spherical models, flattened models, disk/bulge/halo models

The course would be a review of selected problems along with a detailed discussion of techniques with some hands-on experience using my codes. It would also draw heavily from Binney and Tremaine.

John

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