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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2016
The statistical theory of strong three-body interactions (Monaghan 1976a, b, Nash and Monaghan 1978) is based on the assumption that the motion of the system in phase space is ergodic, and that the energy and angular momentum are the only isolating integrals. The a priori phase space is infinite because the system is not confined by walls, but this is only a formal difficulty since the numerical calculations show that the motion takes place in a finite region of ordinary space and this fact can be incorporated in the statistical description. The probability density of the system in phase space is essentially Gibb’s Micro-Canonical ensemble.