Related papers: Coherent Stellar Motion in Galactic Spiral Arms by…
The origin and maintenance of spiral structure in galaxies, the correlation between different types of spiral structure and several proposed mechanisms for their generation, and the evolution of spiral arms of galaxies with time are…
Spiral arms, if they are massive, exert gravitational torques that transport angular momentum radially within galactic disks. These torques depend not on the pattern speed or permanence of the arms but only on the nonaxisymmetric mass…
Spiral galaxies are observed to exhibit a range of morphologies, in particular in the shape of spiral arms. A key diagnostic parameter is the pitch angle, which describes how tightly wound the spiral arms are. Observationally and…
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…
In spiral galaxies, the pitch angle, $\alpha$, of the spiral arms is often proposed as a discriminator between theories for the formation of the spiral structure. In Lin-Shu density wave theory, $\alpha$ stays constant in time, being simply…
In order to understand the physical mechanism underlying non-steady stellar spiral arms in disk galaxies we performed a series of N-body simulations with 1.2 and 8 million particles. The initial conditions were chosen to follow…
The most important theory of the spiral arms of galaxies is the density wave theory based on the Lin-Shu dispersion relation. However, the density waves move with the group velocity towards the inner Lindblad resonance and tend to…
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…
A model based on disk-stability criteria to determine the number of spiral arms of a general disk galaxy with an exponential disk, a bulge and a dark halo described by a Hernquist model is presented. The multifold rotational symmetry of the…
We show that spiral waves in galaxy discs churn the stars and gas in a manner that largely preserves the overall angular momentum distribution and leads to little increase in random motion. Changes in the angular momenta of individual stars…
Since the discovery that the majority of low-redshift galaxies exhibit some level of spiral structure, a number of theories have been proposed as to why these patterns exist. A popular explanation is a process known as swing amplification,…
The shearing sheet model of a galactic disk is studied anew. The theoretical description of its dynamics is based on three building blocks: Stellar orbits, which are described here in epicyclic approximation, the collisionless Boltzmann…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The manifold theory of barred-spiral structure provides a dynamical mechanism explaining how spiral arms beyond the ends of galactic bars can be supported by chaotic flows extending beyond the bar's co-rotation zone. We discuss its…
We test the effect of assumptions about stellar motion on the behavior of gravitational instabilities in protoplanetary disks around solar-type stars by performing two simulations that are identical in all respects except the treatment of…
Stars in disks of spiral galaxies are usually assumed to remain roughly at their birth radii. This assumption is built into decades of modelling of the evolution of stellar populations in our own Galaxy and in external systems. We present…
More than a dozen young stars host spiral arms in their surrounding protoplanetary disks. The excitation mechanisms of such arms are under debate. The two leading hypotheses -- companion-disk interaction and gravitational instability (GI)…