We report on empirical trends between the dynamically determined stellar initial mass function (IMF) and stellar population properties for a complete, volume-limited sample of 260 early-type galaxies from the ATLAS project. We study trends between our dynamically-derived IMF normalisation αdyn ≡ (M/L)stars/(M/L)Salp and absorption line strengths, and interpret these via single stellar populatio...

The central bulge of M31 is observed to have two distinct brightness peaks with the separation of ∼ 2 pc. Tremaine (1995) recently proposed a new idea that the M31’s nucleus is actually a single thick eccentric disk surrounding the central super-massive black hole. In order to explore the origin of the proposed eccentric disk, we numerically investigate the dynamical evolution of a merger betwe...

A significant fraction of nearby elliptical galaxies are known to have high-density gas disks in their circumnuclear (CN) region (0.1 to a few kpc). Yet, ellipticals, especially luminous ones, show little signs of recent star formation. To investigate the possible cause of the dearth of star formation in these systems, we study the gravitational stability of CN gas disks embedded within the gra...

sperm cells are one of the most stellar and fas-cinating cells in all species. one of the most distinctive characteristic of these cells is their movement dynamics which can be observed through a light microscope. the first paper regarding sperm cell biology that appeared on pubmed was pres-ented by dr. w.f. whitney (1). there, he showed the staining properties of spermatozoa and it was publish...

Tidal captures can produce objects that are observationally and dynamically important in dense stellar systems. Recent discoveries of compact young clusters in and out of the Galaxy have prompted the studies of dynamics of star clusters with a large range in stellar masses. The tidal interactions between high and low mass stars are found to be rather frequent in such clusters. In this Research ...

We derive a model that describes the dynamics of a Brownian particle, such as a massive black hole, in a stellar system dominated by gravitational forces, and examine whether it achieves a state of equipartition of kinetic energy with the stars. This problem has been considered before only for stellar systems with an isothermal Maxwellian distribution of velocities; here we study other examples...

Three-body effects greatly complicate stellar evolution. We model the effects of encounters of binaries with single stars, based on parameters chosen from conditions prevalent in the cores of globular clusters. For our three-body encounters, we start with a population of primordial binaries, and choose incoming stars from the evolving single star populations of paper I. In addition, we study th...

Significant fraction of barred galaxies hosts secondary bar-like structures on optical and NIR images. The circumnuclear dynamics of double-barred objects are still not well understood, observational data concerning kinematics are incomplete and inconsistent. In order to compare the simulations results with observations, we have started new spectroscopic studying of stellar kinematics in lentic...

The modern study of the dynamics of stellar systems requires the use of high-performance computers. Indeed, an accurate modelization of the structure and evolution of self-gravitating systems like planetary systems, open clusters, globular clusters and galaxies imply the evaluation of body-body interaction over the whole size of the structure, a task that is computationally very expensive, in p...