Abstract
Abstract In this Letter, we investigate the stability of the statistical equilibrium of spherically symmetric collisionless self-gravitating systems. By calculating the second variation of the entropy, we find that perturbations of the relevant physical quantities should be classified as long- and short-range perturbations, which correspond to the long- and short-range relaxation mechanisms, respectively. We show that the statistical equilibrium states of self-gravitating systems are neither maximum nor minimum, but complex saddle-point entropy states, and hence differ greatly from the case of ideal gas. Violent relaxation should be divided into two phases. The first phase is the entropy-production phase, while the second phase is the entropy-decreasing phase. We speculate that the second-phase violent relaxation may just be the long-wave Landau damping, which would work together with short-range relaxations to keep the system equilibrated around the saddle-point entropy states.
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