Radial orbit instability in systems of highly eccentric orbits: Antonov problem reviewed

Abstract

Stationary stellar systems with radially elongated orbits are subject to radial orbit instability -- an important phenomenon that structures galaxies. Antonov (1973) presented a formal proof of the instability for spherical systems in the limit of purely radial orbits. However, such spheres have highly inhomogeneous density distributions with singularity $\sim 1/r^2$, resulting in an inconsistency in the proof. The proof can be refined, if one considers an orbital distribution close to purely radial, but not entirely radial, which allows to avoid the central singularity. For this purpose we employ non-singular analogs of generalised polytropes elaborated recently in our work in order to derive and solve new integral equations adopted for calculation of unstable eigenmodes in systems with nearly radial orbits. In addition, we establish a link between our and Antonov's approaches and uncover the meaning of infinite entities in the purely radial case. Maximum growth rates tend to infinity as the system becomes more and more radially anisotropic. The instability takes place both for even and odd spherical harmonics, with all unstable modes developing rapidly, i.e. having eigenfrequencies comparable to or greater than typical orbital frequencies. This invalidates orbital approximation in the case of systems with all orbits very close to purely radial.