ELLIPSOIDAL SELF-CONSISTENT PHASE MODELS OF STELLAR-SYSTEMS

This paper presents a review of the dynamics of collisionless, homogeneous gravitating ellipsoids. A combined method for the construction of self-consistent models is applied, which takes into account both the elements of the kinetic method and those of the hydrodynamical description. We study both non-stationary models and equilibrium figures. An intrinsic characteristic of these models is that they are all, in one way or another, degenerate in six-dimensional phase space. We classify the models as five-, four- and three-dimensional phase ellipsoids.