Sverre Aarseth

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Sverre Aarseth
Born (1934-07-20) 20 July 1934 (age 88)
NationalityNorwegian
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Known for N-body dynamics
Awards Brouwer Award (1998)
Scientific career
Fields Astronomy
Institutions Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Doctoral students

Sverre Johannes Aarseth, (born 20 July 1934) is a research scientist at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. Although retired, Aarseth is still an active researcher. He has dedicated his career to the development of N-body codes. He is the author of the NBODY family of codes, the current iteration is NBODY7. [1] His current areas of research include the effects of stellar evolution in N-body codes, the influence of black holes on stellar systems, the evolution of globular clusters, and the use of GPUs to increase the speed of his codes.

Aarseth was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1986-87. [2] He was awarded the 1998 Brouwer Award for his work on advancing dynamical astronomy. [3] The asteroid 9836 Aarseth is named in his honour.

Outside of research, Aarseth's interests include mountaineering, trekking and wildlife. [4] He is also a keen chess player, and was awarded the title International Master for Correspondence in 1981. [5]

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open cluster</span> Large group of stars less bound than globular clusters

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Rainer Spurzem is a German astronomer at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut in Heidelberg, Germany. His speciality is the N-body simulation of galaxies and star clusters.

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Annapurni Subramaniam is the director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore and works on areas like star clusters, stellar evolution and population in galaxies and Magellanic clouds.

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In cosmology, Gurzadyan-Savvidy (GS) relaxation is a theory developed by Vahe Gurzadyan and George Savvidy to explain the relaxation over time of the dynamics of N-body gravitating systems such as star clusters and galaxies. Stellar systems observed in the Universe – globular clusters and elliptical galaxies – reveal their relaxed state reflected in the high degree of regularity of some of their physical characteristics such as surface luminosity, velocity dispersion, geometric shapes, etc. The basic mechanism of relaxation of stellar systems has been considered the 2-body encounters, to lead to the observed fine-grained equilibrium. The coarse-grained phase of evolution of gravitating systems is described by violent relaxation developed by Donald Lynden-Bell. The 2-body mechanism of relaxation is known in plasma physics. The difficulties with description of collective effects in N-body gravitating systems arise due to the long-range character of gravitational interaction, as distinct of plasma where due to two different signs of charges the Debye screening takes place. The 2-body relaxation mechanism e.g. for elliptical galaxies predicts around years i.e. time scales exceeding the age of the Universe. The problem of relaxation and evolution of stellar systems and the role of collective effects are studied by various techniques, see. Among the efficient methods of study of N-body gravitating systems are the numerical simulations, particularly, Sverre Aarseth's N-body codes are widely used.

Rosa Amelia González-Lópezlira is a Mexican astronomer specializing in galaxy formation and evolution, the age distribution of stars in different regions of galaxies, and the rotation rate of globular clusters in galaxies, including the discovery of an anomalously fast rotation rate in Messier 106. She is a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in the UNAM Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Elena Kirilovsky-Terlevich is an Argentine astrophysicist who works in Mexico as a researcher in the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE). Her research involves galaxy formation and evolution, and the patterns of star formation within galaxies, especially those with active nuclei.

References

  1. Aarseth, A. J. (2012). "Mergers and ejections of black holes in globular clusters". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 422 (1): 841–848. arXiv: 1202.4688 . Bibcode:2012MNRAS.422..841A. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.20666.x. S2CID   62826586.
  2. Institute for Advanced Study: A Community of Scholars
  3. "List of Brouwer Award Winners". American Astronomical Society . Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  4. "Sverre's Interests". Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  5. "International Correspondence Chess Federation International Masters" (PDF). International Correspondence Chess Federation. November 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 March 2021. Retrieved 27 June 2012.