Figure 10

Figure 10: Results from a set of $N$ -body integrations of a massive binary in a galaxy with a $r ~ r -0.5$ density cusp [205]. Each curve is the average of a set of integrations starting from different random realizations of the same initial conditions. (a) Evolution of the “mass deficit” (Equation 43 ), i.e. the mass in stars ejected by the binary. For a given value of binary separation $a$ , the mass deficit is nearly independent of particle number $N$ , implying that one can draw conclusions from observed mass deficits about the binary that produced them. (b) Evolution of binary eccentricity. The eccentricity evolution is strongly $N$ -dependent and tends to decrease with increasing $N$ , suggesting that the eccentricity evolution in real binaries would be modest.