A semi-analytic dynamical friction model that reproduces core stalling

We present a new semi-analytic model for dynamical friction based on Chandrasekhar's formalism. The key novelty is the introduction of physically motivated, radially varying, maximum and minimum impact parameters. With these, our model gives an excellent match to full N-body simulations for isotropic background density distributions, both cuspy and shallow, without any fine tuning of the model parameters. In particular, we are able to reproduce the dramatic core-stalling effect that occurs in shallow/constant-density cores, for the first time. This gives us new physical insight into the core-stalling phenomenon. We show that core stalling occurs in the limit in which the product of the Coulomb logarithm and the local fraction of stars with velocity lower than the infalling body tends to zero. For cuspy backgrounds, this occurs when the infalling mass approaches the enclosed background mass. For cored backgrounds, it occurs at larger distances from the centre, due to a combination of a rapidly increasing minimum impact parameter and a lack of slow moving stars in the core. This demonstrates that the physics of core stalling is likely the same for both massive infalling objects and low-mass objects moving in shallow-density backgrounds. We implement our prescription for dynamical friction in the direct summation code NBODY6 as an analytic correction for stars that remain within the Roche volume of the infalling object. This approach is computationally efficient, since only stars in the inspiralling system need to be evolved with direct summation. Our method can be applied to study a variety of astrophysical systems, including young star clusters orbiting near the Galactic Centre; globular clusters moving within the Galaxy; and dwarf galaxies orbiting within dark matter haloes.