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Related papers: Dawes Review 4: Spiral Structures in Disc Galaxies

200 papers

Star formation is enhanced in spiral arms because of a combination of orbit crowding, cloud collisions, and gravitational instabilities. The characteristic mass for the instability is 10^7 Msun in gas and 10^5 Msun in stars, and the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-13 Bruce G. Elmegreen

Spiral arms are the most characteristic features of disc galaxies, easily distinguishable due to their association with ongoing star formation. However, the role of spiral structure in the chemical evolution of galaxies is unclear. Here we…

Fragmentation of spiral arms can drive the formation of giant clumps and induce intense star formation in disc galaxies. Based on the spiral-arm instability analysis of our Paper I, we present linear perturbation theory of dynamical…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-03-06 Shigeki Inoue , Naoki Yoshida

Circumstellar asymmetries such as central warps have recently been shown to cast shadows on outer disks. We investigate the hydrodynamical consequences of such variable illumination on the outer regions of a transition disk, and the…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2016-05-17 Matias Montesinos , Sebastian Perez , Simon Casassus , Sebastian Marino , Jorge Cuadra , Valentin Christiaens

Context. Regularly-spaced, star-forming regions along the spiral arms of nearby galaxies provide insight into the early stages and initial conditions of star formation. The regular separation of these star-forming regions suggests spiral…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-07-24 Raghav Arora , Christoph Federrath , Robi Banerjee , Bastian Körtgen

Most fully developed galaxies have a vivid spiral structure, but the formation and evolution of the spiral structure are still an enigma in astrophysics. In this paper, according to the standard Newtonian gravitational theory and some…

General Physics · Physics 2009-05-16 Ying-Qiu Gu

We test whether the spiral patterns apparent in many large disk galaxies should be thought of as dynamical features that are stationary in a co-rotating frame for > t_{dyn}, as implied by the density wave approach for explaining spiral…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-28 Kelly Foyle , Hans-Walter Rix , Clare Dobbs , Adam Leroy , Fabian Walter

Star clusters provide unique advantages for investigating Galactic spiral arms, particularly due to their precise ages, positions, and kinematic properties, which are further enhanced by ongoing updates from the astrometric data. In this…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-01-27 Xiaochen Liu , Zhihong He , Yangping Luo , Kun Wang

The origin of galactic spiral arms is one of fundamental problems in astrophysics. Based on the local analysis Toomre (1981) proposed the swing amplification mechanism in which the self-gravity forms spiral arms as leading waves of stars…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-09-05 Shugo Michikoshi , Eiichiro Kokubo

We use global MHD galaxy simulations to investigate the effects of spiral arms on the evolution of magnetic fields and star formation within a self-regulated interstellar medium (ISM). The same galaxy is simulated twice: once with…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-06-23 Hector Robinson , James Wadsley , J. A. Sellwood , Ralph E. Pudritz

Context. The origin and nature of spiral arms remain unclear. Star forming regions and young stars are generally strongly associated to the spiral structure, but there are few quantitative predictions from simulations about the involvement…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-28 J. Ardèvol , M. Semczuk , T. Antoja , V. P. Debattista , M. Bernet , A. Pettitt

Recent JWST observations have revealed the prevalence of spiral structures at $z > 1$. Unlike in the local Universe, the origin and the consequence of spirals at this epoch remain unexplored. We use public JWST/NIRCam data from the…

The onset of spiral structure in galaxies appears to occur between redshifts 1.4 and 1.8 when disks have developed a cool stellar component, rotation dominates over turbulent motions in the gas, and massive clumps become less frequent.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-18 Debra Meloy Elmegreen , Bruce G. Elmegreen

The role of spiral arms in galaxies -- whether they enhance star formation efficiency or primarily act as material gatherers -- remains an open question. Observational studies have yielded ambiguous results, in part due to the choice of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-07 Bingqing Sun , Daniela Calzetti , Andrew J. Battisti

Spiral galaxies are ubiquitous in the local Universe. However the properties of spiral arms in them are still not well studied, and there is even less information concerning spiral structure in distant galaxies. We aim to measure the most…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-03-12 Ilia V. Chugunov , Alexander A. Marchuk , Aleksandr V. Mosenkov

We use classifications provided by citizen scientists though Galaxy Zoo to investigate the correlation between bulge size and arm winding in spiral galaxies. Whilst the traditional spiral sequence is based on a combination of both measures,…

Recent studies show the possibility of the formation of fairly regular and global spiral patterns in dwarf galaxies (dS type). Our sample of observed dwarf objects of this class also includes galaxies with a central stellar bar. The…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-08-01 Sergey Khrapov , Alexander Khoperskov , Natalia Zaitseva , Anatoly Zasov , Alexander Titov

The formation and evolution of spiral arms in low surface brightness galaxies (LSBs) are not well-understood. We study the dynamics of spiral arms in two prototypical LSBs, F568-VI and F568-01, using both analytical models and N-body +…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-07-04 Ganesh Narayanan , Anagha A. G. , Arunima Banerjee

High resolution N-body simulations using different codes and initial condition techniques reveal two different behaviours for the rotation frequency of transient spiral arms like structures. Whereas unbarred disks present spiral arms nearly…

We propose a new theory to explain the formation of spiral arms and of all types of outer rings in barred galaxies. We have extended and applied the technique used in celestial mechanics to compute transfer orbits. Thus, our theory is based…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-12-31 M. Romero-Gomez , E. Athanassoula , J. J. Masdemont , C. Garcia-Gomez