The Unreasonable Effectiveness of the nΣv Approximation

In kinetic theory, the classic nΣv approach calculates the rate of particle interactions from local quantities: the number density of particles n, the cross section Σ, and the average relative speed v. In stellar dynamics, this formula is often applied to problems in collisional (i.e., dense) environments such as globular and nuclear star clusters, where blue stragglers, tidal capture binaries, binary ionizations, and microtidal disruptions arise from rare close encounters. The local nΣv approach implicitly assumes the ergodic hypothesis, which is not well motivated for the densest star systems in the Universe. In the centers of globular and nuclear star clusters, orbits close into 1D ellipses because of the degeneracy of the potential (either Keplerian or harmonic). We find that the interaction rate in perfectly Keplerian or harmonic potentials is determined by a global quantity—the number of orbital intersections—and that this rate can be far lower or higher than the ergodic nΣv estimate. However, we find that, in most astrophysical systems, deviations from a perfectly Keplerian or harmonic potential (due to, e.g., granularity or extended mass) trigger sufficient orbital precession to recover the nΣv interaction rate. Astrophysically relevant failures of the nΣv approach only seem to occur for tightly bound stars orbiting intermediate-mass black holes, or for the high-mass end of collisional cascades in certain debris disks.