Related papers: Global lopsided instability in a purely stellar ga…

We quantify the degree of lopsidedness for a sample of 149 galaxies observed in the near-infrared from the OSUBGS sample, and try to explain the physical origin for the observed disk lopsidedness. We confirm previous studies, but now for a…

We address the cosmological evolution of violent gravitational instability in high-redshift, massive, star-forming galactic discs. To this aim, we integrate in time the equations of mass and energy conservation under self-regulated…

Numerical simulations of global three-dimensional (3D), self-gravitating discs with a gap opened by an embedded planet are presented. The simulations are customised to examine planetary gap stability. Previous results, obtained by Lin &…

It is well established that stellar discs are destabilized by sharp features in their phase space, driving recurrent spiral modes. We explore the extent to which surface-density breaks in disc galaxies - which represent sharp changes in the…

The HI surface density maps for a sample of 18 galaxies in the Eridanus group are Fourier analysed. This analysis gives the radial variation of the lopsidedness in the HI spatial distribution. The lopsidedness is quantified by the Fourier…

In this review, I discuss just three aspects of the stability and evolution of galactic discs. (1) I first review our understanding of the bar instability and how it can be controlled. Disc galaxies in which the orbital speed does not…

We derive the evolution equations describing a thin axisymmetric disk of gas and stars with an arbitrary rotation curve that is kept in a state of marginal gravitational instability and energy equilibrium due to the balance between energy…

We demonstrate the existence of long-lived, large-amplitude eccentric modes in massive, annular particle disks in orbit about a central mass. The lopsided modes we have found precess slowly in the prograde direction at a rate which…

We explore the linear stability of astrophysical discs exhibiting vertical shear, which arises when there is a radial variation in the temperature or entropy. Such discs are subject to a "vertical-shear instability", which recent nonlinear…

Accretion disks around stars, or other central massive bodies, can support long-lived, slowly precessing $m=1$ disturbances in which the fluid motion is nearly Keplerian with non-zero eccentricity. We study such `slow modes' in disks that…

We present a measurement of lopsidedness for the stellar disks of 60 field spiral galaxies in terms of the azimuthal m=1 Fourier amplitude, A_1, of the stellar light. We conjecture that this lopsidedness is caused by tidal interactions and…

We present high-resolution 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of the formation and evolution of protostellar discs in a turbulent molecular cloud. Using a piecewise polytropic equation of state, we perform two sets of…

This paper continues a series reporting different aspects of the behaviour of disc galaxy simulations that support spiral instabilities. The focus in this paper is to demonstrate how linear spiral instabilities saturate and decay, and how…

Lopsidedness is a common feature in galaxies, both in the distribution of light and in the kinematics. We investigate the kinematics of a model for lopsided galaxies that consists of a disc lying off-centre in a dark halo, and circling…

We develop several aspects of the theory of gaseous astrophysical discs in which the gravity of the disc makes a significant contribution to its structure and dynamics. We show how the internal gravitational potential can be expanded in…

Flow nonnormality induced linear transient phenomena in thin self-gravitating astrophysical discs are studied in the shearing sheet approximation. The considered system includes two modes of perturbations: vortex and (spiral density) wave.…

We present a numerical model for the evolution of a protostellar disc that has formed self-consistently from the collapse of a molecular cloud core. The global evolution of the disc is followed for several million years after its formation.…

Angular momentum transport within young massive protoplanetary discs may be dominated by self-gravity at radii where the disk is too weakly ionized to allow the development of the magneto-rotational instability. We use time-dependent…

We use smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of massive protostellar discs to investigate the predicted broadening of molecular lines from discs in which self-gravity is the dominant source of angular momentum transport. The…

We study particle dynamics in local two-dimensional simulations of self-gravitating accretion discs with a simple cooling law. It is well known that the structure which arises in the gaseous component of the disc due to a gravitational…