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Jeans' gravitational instability and nonextensive kinetic theory
The concept of Jeans gravitational instability is rediscussed in the
framework of nonextensive statistics and its associated kinetic theory. A
simple analytical formula generalizing the Jeans criterion is derived by
assuming that the unperturbed self- gravitating collisionless gas is
kinetically described by the -parameterized class of power law velocity
distributions. It is found that the critical values of wavelength and mass
depend explicitly on the nonextensive -parameter. The standard Jeans
wavelength derived for a Maxwellian distribution is recovered in the limiting
case =1. For power-law distributions with cutoff, the instability condition
is weakened with the system becoming unstable even for wavelengths of the
disturbance smaller than the standard Jeans length .Comment: 5 pages, including 3 figures. Accepted for publication in A&
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