I'm looking to better understand the stability of globular clusters for an n-body dynamical simulation, specifically with respect to initial data conditions.
I know that the total potential energy needs to be larger in magnitude than total kinetic energy for the cluster to be gravitationally bound, but I wasn't sure what kind of constraints on momenta would keep the cluster from collapsing in on itself.
I found this paper by Soviet physicist A. M. Fridman from about 50 years ago (link below) and it states that the "total momentum of a globular cluster practically vanishes", and this sounds reasonable enough to me, but I realize this paper is a little older, and it doesn't really justify or cite this claim as far as I can tell. I also haven't found any other sources to verify this claim, is there anyone out there that works with globular clusters/ have some sources that can verify if this is the case?
Here is the English translation of the original paper The Stability of Globular Clusters and Spherical Galaxies and it's abstract:
A globular star cluster (or spherical galaxy) is modeled by a spherically symmetric system of rotating, gravitational masses. In accordance with observational evidence an r-2 density profile is adopted, with particle trajectories such as the total momentum of the system vanishes. The stability of such a model against arbitrary perturbations has been demonstrated on the basis of results from plasma physics; rigorous mathematical proofs of stability have been given elsewhere [4-7].
