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This paper presents $N$-body and stochastic models that describe the motion of tracer particles in a potential that contains a large population of extended substructures. Fluctuations of the gravitational field induce a random walk of orbital velocities that is fully specified by drift and diffusion coefficients. In the impulse and local approximations the coefficients are computed analytically from the number density, mass, size and relative velocity of substructures without arbitrary cuts in forces or impact parameters. The resulting Coulomb logarithm attains a well-defined geometrical meaning, $ln(Lambda)=ln (D/c)$, where $D/c$ is the ratio between the average separation and the individual size of substructures. Direct-force and Monte-Carlo $N$-body experiments show excellent agreement with the theory if substructures are sufficiently extended ($c/Dgtrsim 10^{-3}$) and not spatially overlapping ($c/Dlesssim 10^{-1}$). However, close encounters with point-like objects ($c/Dll 10^{-3}$) induce a heavy-tailed, non-Gaussian distribution of high-energy impulses that cannot be described with Brownian statistics. In the point-mass limit ($c/Dapprox 0$) the median Coulomb logarithm measured from $N$-body models deviates from the theoretical relation, converging towards a maximum value $langle ln(Lambda)rangle approx 8.2$ independently of the mass and relative velocity of nearby substructures.
Gravitating systems surrounded by a dynamic sea of substructures experience fluctuations of the local tidal field which inject kinetic energy into the internal motions. This paper uses stochastic calculus techniques to describe `tidal heating as a ra
A large population of extended substructures generates a stochastic gravitational field that is fully specified by the function $p({bf F})$, which defines the probability that a tracer particle experiences a force $bf F$ within the interval ${bf F},{
We present the widest-field resolved stellar map to date of the closest ($Dsim3.8$ Mpc) massive elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 (Centaurus A; Cen A), extending out to a projected galactocentric radius of $sim150$ kpc. The dataset is part of our ongoing Pa
Analysis of large-scale sequential data has been one of the most crucial tasks in areas such as bioinformatics, text, and audio mining. Existing string kernels, however, either (i) rely on local features of short substructures in the string, which ha
Cold Dark Matter (CDM) theory, a pillar of modern cosmology and astrophysics, predicts the existence of a large number of starless dark matter halos surrounding the Milky Way (MW). However, clear observational evidence of these dark substructures rem