Dynamics of stellar systems: Violent relaxation and gravothermal catastrophe

The gravitational evolution of stellar systems exhibit collective and collisional effects. Collective effects (Violent Relaxation) seems to be unefficient to create any structure or to relax the distribution function. Gravothermal Catastrophe is shown to be a real instability driven by collisions, but its time scale is very long compared to astrophysical times. It is suggested that intermediate range perturbations may modify these conclusions.