Related papers: Multiarm spirals on the periphery of disc galaxies
The causes of spiral structure in galaxies remain uncertain. Leaving aside the grand bisymmetric spirals with their own well-known complications, here we consider the possibility that multi-armed spiral features originate from density…
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…
One of the scenarios for the formation of grand-design spiral arms in disky galaxies involves their interactions with a satellite or another galaxy. Here we consider another possibility, where the perturbation is instead due to the…
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…
We describe simulations of the response of a gaseous disc to an active spiral potential. The potential is derived from an N-body calculation and leads to a multi-armed time-evolving pattern. The gas forms long spiral arms typical of grand…
We study transient spiral structures in an isothermal, thin, galactic disc. We find no instability that can grow everywhere from infinitesimal disturbances, but spiral structure does grow in the disc due to an arbitrarily strong,…
Studying star formation in spiral arms tells us not only about the evolution of star formation, and molecular clouds, but can also tell us about the nature of spiral structure in galaxies. I will address both these topics using the results…
Spirals in galaxies have long been thought to be caused by gravitational instability in the stellar component of the disk, but discerning the precise mechanism had proved elusive. Tidal interactions, and perhaps bars, may provoke some…
Spiral arms are the defining features of broad morphological classes of disc galaxies, but their nature and influence on galaxy evolution is still under debate. A key diagnostic for their nature is the spiral arm pattern speed: the radial…
Fragmentation of a spiral arm is thought to drive the formation of giant clumps in galaxies. Using linear perturbation analysis for self-gravitating spiral arms, we derive an instability parameter and define the conditions for clump…
Spiral density wave theory attempts to describe the spiral pattern in spiral galaxies in terms of a long-lived wave structure with a constant pattern speed in order to avoid the winding dilemma. The pattern is consequently a rigidly…
We propose a new dynamical picture of galactic stellar and gas spirals, based on hydrodynamic simulations in a `live' stellar disk. We focus especially on spiral structures excited in a isolated galactic disk without a stellar bar. Using…
Spiral arm structures seen in scattered light observations of protoplanetary disks can potentially serve as signposts of planetary companions. They can also lend unique insights into disk masses, which are critical in setting the mass…
The dynamical nature and formation mechanism(s) of galactic spiral arms remain long-standing problems in astrophysics. Most theoretical work is based on analytic calculations or idealised simulations, which has yielded several theories of…
The nature of galactic spiral arms in disc galaxies remains elusive. Regardless of the spiral model, arms are expected to play a role in sculpting the star-forming interstellar medium. As such, different arm models may result in differences…
Galactic magnetic arms have been observed between the gaseous arms of some spiral galaxies; their origin remains unclear. We suggest that magnetic spiral arms can be naturally generated in the interarm regions because the galactic fountain…
We begin by recalling the isothermal, collisionless, disc-halo. The disc component is the Mestel disc. Subsequently we introduce spiral arms to such an isothermal disc-halo system that are co-moving in the mean with an axi-symmetric…
Spiral density wave theory attempts to describe the spiral pattern in spiral galaxies in terms of a long-lived wave structure with a constant pattern speed in order to avoid the winding dilemma. The pattern is consequently a rigidly…
In order to understand the physical mechanisms underlying non-steady stellar spiral arms in disk galaxies, we analyzed the growing and damping phases of their spiral arms using three-dimensional $N$-body simulations. We confirmed that 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.…