Mahir Hadžić: On gravitational relaxation

I will provide a gentle mathematical introduction to the theory of gravitational phase-mixing, which is a mechanism that drives galaxies to settle to equilibria at late times. While related to the celebrated Landau damping phenomenon in plasma physics, it also entails significant differences triggered by the presence of gravitational forces. I will highlight a (happy) interaction between PDE, spectral theory, and geometry that allows us to quantitatively describe the resulting gravitational relaxation mechanism.