The violently changing gravitational field of a newly formed galaxy is effective in changing the statistics of stellar orbits. The equilibrium distribution under this encounterless relaxation is found by use of a fourth type of statistics related to both Fermi–Dirac statistics and equipartition of energy per unit mass. In the relevant limit this becomes Maxwell's distribution but with temperature proportional to mass.
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D. Lynden–Bell (1967) studied this question.
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