Related papers: Feathering Instability of Spiral Arms. II. Paramet…
Spiral arms are observed in numerous protoplanetary discs. These spiral arms can be excited by companions, either on bound or unbound orbits. We simulate a scenario where an unbound perturber, i.e. a flyby, excites spiral arms during a…
We report the highest-fidelity observations of the spiral galaxy M51 in CO emission, revealing the evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) vis-a-vis the large-scale galactic structure and dynamics. The most massive GMCs (so-called GMAs)…
Spiral galaxies are common in the local Universe, but their formation, evolution, and interplay with bars remain poorly understood. We use a sample of 391 nearby galaxies from the S$^4$G survey to characterise the winding angle and…
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…
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…
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…
The Herschel Gould Belt Survey showed that stars form in dense filaments in nearby molecular clouds. Recent studies suggest that massive filaments are bound by the slow shocks caused by accretion flows onto the filaments. The slow shock is…
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…
Aside from the grand-design stellar spirals appearing in the disk of M81, a pair of stellar spiral arms situated well inside the bright bulge of M81 has been recently discovered by Kendall et al. (2008). The seemingly unrelated pairs of…
This paper is the first in a series investigating magnetohydrodynamic instabilities that may contribute to angular-momentum transport and magnetic-field evolution in stellar radiative zones. We focus on shear-driven instabilities,…
The kinematic complexity and the favorable position of M51 on the sky make this galaxy an ideal target to test different theories of spiral arm dynamics. Taking advantage of the new high resolution PdBI Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey (PAWS)…
The origin and types of spiral arms are reviewed with an emphasis on the connections between these arms and star formation. Flocculent spiral arms are most likely the result of transient instabilities in the gas that promote dense cloud…
We use the high spatial and spectral resolution of the PAWS CO(1-0) survey of the inner 9 kpc of the iconic spiral galaxy M51 to examine the effect of gas streaming motions on the star-forming properties of individual GMCs. We compare our…
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…
Spiral arms shown by different components may not be spatially coincident, which can constrain formation mechanisms of spiral structure in a galaxy. We reassess the spiral arm tangency directions in the Milky Way through identifying the…
We explore the interplay between in-plane and vertical dynamics in stellar discs within the framework of the shearing box approximation. Julian and Toomre used the shearing sheet to show that leading density waves are amplified as they…
Context. Protoplanetary disks are known to host spiral features that are observed in scattered light, ALMA continuum and more recently in CO gas emission and gas dynamics. It is however unknown if spirals in gas and dust trace the same…
The majority of astrophysics involves the study of spiral galaxies, and stars and planets within them, but how spiral arms in galaxies form and evolve is still a fundamental problem. Major progress in this field was made primarily in the…
Direct imaging observations have revealed spiral structures in protoplanetary disks. Previous studies have suggested that planet-induced spiral arms cannot explain some of these spiral patterns, due to the large pitch angle and high…
The density-wave theory of galactic spiral-arm structure makes a striking prediction that the pitch angle of spiral arms should vary with the wavelength of the galaxy's image. The reason is that stars are born in the density wave but move…