Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 66 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
First velocity moment. Assume a stationary, spherical, nonstreaming collisionless stellar system with constant mass-to-light ratio . Use a luminosity-weighted galactic distribution function, with luminosity density . Multiplying the Collisionless Boltzmann equation by and integrating over velocities, with its velocity-space boundary terms vanishing, givesSpherical symmetry makes the stress tensorHere is one tangential component, as in the paper; the total tangential variance is . Its radial divergence is , since the divergence of the radial unit vector is . With the velocity-anisotropy parameter , and enclosed mass , this gives the Spherical Jeans equationThis uses a constant ratio of total gravitating mass to luminosity, rather than an arbitrary independent dark halo.
Projection and elimination of anisotropy. Write for projected radius and for spherical radius. The Abel transform of the luminosity density giveswhose inverse is the displayed density inversion in the paper. At a point on this line of sight, . The line-of-sight second stellar velocity moment is . Therefore the measured quantity satisfiesThe Spherical Jeans equation gives . Substitution yieldsThe inner printed in the PDF's definition of must therefore be : the literal expression has an extra gravitational factor and lacks the density. Both this derivation and dimensional consistency require the correction. Define the projected spherical Jeans residual byTo express it entirely in terms of the radial stress, putDifferentiating the nonsingular representation gives . HenceIf vanishes at zero and infinity, then . These are the absence-of-boundary-stress conditions needed for the global result.
The virial relation, term by term. Interchange the order in the residual integral and useIt follows thatThe first term is : spherical averaging assigns one third of the integrated velocity-square to any fixed viewing direction, giving . The gravitational potential energy isThus the integrated residual is exactly , and its vanishing is the virial theorem. Solving for gives the global projected virial estimate of a mass-to-light ratio,It is independent of the radial anisotropy profile when the full aperture and the stated boundary conditions are used. A finite aperture retains a boundary term.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 iii Paper 73 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Assume a stationary, spherical, nonrotating collisionless stellar system, a constant mass-to-light ratio , and vanishing boundary stresses at infinity. Let be the luminosity density, so , and set . Distinguish spatial radius from projected radius . The enclosed luminosity and radial force areHere is the velocity dispersion of either one of the two tangential components; thus . If a combined tangential variance is used instead, its contribution must be divided by two in this definition.
To derive the Jeans equation, start with the steady Collisionless Boltzmann equation . Multiply by and integrate over all velocities. Integration by parts in velocity, with decaying fast enough to eliminate boundary terms, givesThe same equation holds with luminosity weighting because the tracer's luminosity is conserved along its orbit. Spherical symmetry makes the local stellar velocity moment tensor diagonal, with entries , , . Its radial divergence is : the second term accounts for the changing directions of the radial and tangential unit vectors. ThereforeThis is the Spherical Jeans equation; it follows from a stellar velocity moment rather than requiring a particular form of the galactic distribution function.
Integrating the luminosity density along a line of sight gives its surface brightness:The second identity is Spherical Abel deprojection. For the second stellar velocity moment, the angle between the radial direction and the line of sight has . The line-of-sight velocity dispersion is therefore , andFrom the Spherical Jeans equation, . Substitution producesThe primary PDF has a genuine symbol error in its projected gravity term: it prints a second multiplying inside the integral, where is required. The corrected projected spherical Jeans residual isTo justify the derivative at the singular-looking lower limit, write . Differentiation then gives . In particular, . If tends to zero both at zero and infinity, as for a finite isolated equilibrium with sufficiently decaying stresses,If a boundary stress survives, its contribution must be retained; the zero-integral statement is not a finite-aperture identity.
Now identify each integral with a term in the virial theorem. Let be the total kinetic energy, including all three random components, and the gravitational potential energy. Averaging over spatial directions in a spherical system gives one third of the total stellar velocity moment along any chosen line of sight, even if the velocities are locally anisotropic. ThusBuilding the spherical mass shell by shell givesFinally, Fubini theorem and give the gravitational contribution to the residual integral explicitly:ConsequentlyThe global projected virial estimate of a mass-to-light ratio is independent of the velocity-anisotropy parameter under these assumptions. It does not remove the mass--anisotropy--density degeneracy for arbitrary radial mass profiles. In particular, if an independent dark matter halo makes mass fail to follow light, a single constant is no longer the physical enclosed mass-to-light ratio at every radius.