Related papers: Dawes Review 4: Spiral Structures in Disc Galaxies
Stellar bars are a common feature in massive disc galaxies. On a theoretical ground, the response of gas to a bar is generally thought to cause nuclear starbursts and, possibly, AGN activity once the perturbed gas reaches the central…
Intermediate-scale spurs are common in spiral galaxies, but perhaps most distinctively evident in a recent HST image of M51 (Scoville & Rector 2001). We investigate, using time-dependent numerical MHD simulations, how such spurs could form…
One of the striking discoveries of protoplanetary disc research in recent years are the spiral arms seen in several transitional discs in polarised scattered light. An interesting interpretation of the observed spiral features is that they…
We have imaged a sample of 20 spiral galaxies in H$\alpha$ and in the near-infrared K band (2.2 um), in order to determine the location and strength of star formation in these objects with respect to perturbations in the old stellar…
We examine the development of a transient spiral arm in a disk galaxy made up of both gas and stars. To this end we have performed numerical simulations in a shearing sheet (basically a rectangular patch of a disc) that contains gas in the…
We have discovered long-lived waves in two sets of numerical models of fast (marginally bound or unbound) flyby galaxy collisions, carried out independently with two different codes. In neither simulation set are the spirals the result of a…
The structure and evolution of the spiral arms of our Milky Way are basic but long-standing questions in astronomy. In particular, the lifetime of spiral arms is still a puzzle and has not been well constrained from observations. In this…
With the use of a background Milky-Way-like potential model, we performed stellar orbital and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. As a first experiment, we studied the gaseous response to a bisymmetric spiral arm potential: the widely…
Gaia data have revealed vertically asymmetric phase-space structures in the Milky Way (MW) disc, such as phase spirals, indicating vertical oscillations. These oscillations exhibit two distinct modes: the bending mode and the breathing…
It has been believed that spirals in pure stellar disks, especially the ones spontaneously formed, decay in several galactic rotations due to the increase of stellar velocity dispersions. Therefore, some cooling mechanism, for example…
Most galaxies have a warped shape when they are seen from an edge-on point of view. The reason for this curious form is not completely known so far and in this work we apply dynamical system tools to contribute to its explanation. Starting…
In the simplest scenario, disk galaxies form predominantly in halos with high angular momentum and quiet recent assembly history, whereas spheroids are the slowly-rotating remnants of repeated merging events. We explore these assumptions…
As galaxies evolve over time, the orbits of their constituent stars are expected to change in size and shape, moving stars away from their birth radius. Radial gas flows are also expected. Spiral arms and bars in galaxies are predicted to…
What role does Galactic structure play in star formation? We have used the Herschel Hi-GAL compact-clump catalogue to examine trends in evolutionary stage over large spatial scales in the inner Galaxy. We examine the relationship between…
We present the results of a series of numerical simulations aimed to study the evolution of a disc galaxy within the global tidal field of a group environment. Both the disc galaxy and the group are modelled as multi-component,…
In this paper we discuss the influence of gravitational instabilities in massive protostellar discs on the dynamics of dust grains. Starting from a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation, we have computed the evolution of the dust…
We investigate dynamical states of grand-design spiral arms in three local galaxies: M51, NGC3627 and NGC628. Based on linear perturbation analysis considering multiple components in the galaxies, we compute instability parameters of the…
We propose a new, more realistic, description of the perturbed gravitational potential of spiral galaxies, with spiral arms having Gaussian-shaped groove profiles. We investigate the stable stellar orbits in galactic disks, using the new…
Using 2D nonlinear simulations, we study the generation and nonlinear evolution of spiral structure in a star-forming multi-component gravitating disk. We confirm in agreement with previous studies the destabilizing role of a cold gaseous…
We developed an algorithm to use Galaxy Zoo 3D spiral arm masks produced by citizen scientist volunteers to semi-automatically classify spiral galaxies as either multi-armed or grand design spirals. Our final sample consists of 299…