Violent Relaxation of Indistinguishable Objects and Neutrino Hot Dark Matter in Clusters of Galaxies

The statistical mechanical investigation of violent relaxation (LyndenBell 1967) is extended to indistinguishable objects. It is found that, coincidentally, the equilibrium distribution is the same as that obtained for classical objects. For massive neutrinos, the Tremaine & Gunn (1979) phase space bound is revisited and reinterpretated as the limit indicating the onset of degeneracy related to the coarse-grained phase space distribution. In the context of one of the currently most popular cosmological models, the Cold and Hot Dark Matter (CHDM) model (Primack et al. 1995), the onset of degeneracy may be of importance in the core region of clusters of galaxies. Degeneracy allows the neutrino HDM density to exceed the limit imposed by the Tremaine & Gunn (1979) bound while accounting for the phase space bound. Subject headings: dark matter — galaxies: clusters: general — methods: