Comparative analysis of the orbital structure for non–cuspy and cuspy triaxial models of galaxies using different expansions of the gravitational potential

Abstract

One way to create models of elliptical galaxies is to start from a system of particles with a suitable distribution and to follow its evolution with an N-body code until it reaches equilibrium. In previous works we used the code of L.A. Aguilar to generate non-cuspy and cuspy models, the latter giving a better representation of elliptical galaxies. However, the method proposed by Hernquist and Ostriker is more suitable for the cases with central cusps, because it uses an expansion of the potential in radial functions that already reflects the cuspy character. Here we consider two models, one non-cuspy and another cuspy, obtained with the method of Aguilar and whose potentials we now fit with the Hernquist and Ostriker expansion. We obtained the corresponding variational equations and we used them to determine the Lyapunov exponents of orbits already investigated with the method of Aguilar and to separate the chaotic ones. We classified the regular orbits through the analysis of their orbital frequencies. Here we present a comparison of the results obtained with the two methods for both types of orbits.