Related papers: How Low Can Q Go?
Gravitational instabilities play an important role in galaxy evolution and in shaping the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is observed to be highly turbulent, meaning that observables like the gas surface density and velocity dispersion…
Growth rates for gravitational instabilities in a thick disk of gas and stars are determined for a turbulent gas that dissipates on the local crossing time. The scale heights are derived from vertical equilibrium. The accuracy of the usual…
Molecular gas disks are generally Toomre stable ($Q_T>$1) and yet clearly gravitationally unstable to structure formation as evidenced by the existence of molecular clouds and ongoing star formation. This paper adopts a 3D perspective to…
Gravitational instability is one of considerable mechanisms to explain the formation of giant planets. We study the gravitational stability for the protoplanetary disks around a protostar. The temperature and Toomre's Q-value are calculated…
Toomre's $Q$ stability parameter has long been shown through various theoretical arguments and numerical simulations, to be the principal determinant of stability against self-gravity in a galactic disk, under classical gravity. Comparison…
Local gravitational instability (LGI) is considered crucial for regulating star formation and gas turbulence in galaxy discs, especially at high redshift. Instability criteria usually assume infinitesimally thin discs or rely on…
Fragmentation of rotating gaseous systems via gravitational instability is believed to be a crucial mechanism in several astrophysical processes, such as formation of planets in protostellar discs, of molecular clouds in galactic discs, and…
We address the cosmological evolution of violent gravitational instability in high-redshift, massive, star-forming galactic discs. To this aim, we integrate in time the equations of mass and energy conservation under self-regulated…
Galactic disks consist of both stars and gas. The gas is more dynamically responsive than the stars, and strongly nonlinear structures and velocities can develop in the ISM even while stellar surface density perturbations remain…
Gravitationally unstable accretion disks emerge in a variety of astrophysical contexts - giant planet formation, FU Orioni outbursts, feeding of AGNs, and the origin of Pop III stars. When a gravitationally unstable disk is unable to cool…
This paper considers gravitational perturbations in geometrically thin disks with rotation curves dominated by a central object, but with substantial contributions from magnetic pressure and tension. The treatment is general, but the…
We investigate the stability of nearby disc galaxies and galaxies at redshift ($z$) equal to 4.5. We explore the connection between the stability parameter $(Q_{RW})$, star formation rate ($SFR$), gas fraction $(f^{Gas})$, and the time…
The local gravitational instability of rotating discs is believed to be an important mechanism in different astrophysical processes, including the formation of gas and stellar clumps in galaxies. We aim to study in three dimensions the…
We study spherical and disk clusters in a near-Keplerian potential of galactic centers or massive black holes. In such a potential orbit precession is commonly retrograde, i.e. direction of the orbit precession is opposite to the orbital…
We study gravitational instability and consequent star formation in a wide range of isolated disk galaxies, using three-dimensional, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations at resolution sufficient to fully resolve gravitational…
We investigate the structure of galaxies formed in a suite of high-resolution cosmological simulations. Consistent with observations of high-redshift galaxies, our simulated galaxies show irregular, prolate shapes, which are dominated by…
We derive the evolution equations describing a thin axisymmetric disk of gas and stars with an arbitrary rotation curve that is kept in a state of marginal gravitational instability and energy equilibrium due to the balance between energy…
Gravitational instabilities (GIs) are spiral distortions in a self-gravitating disk that appear wherever the local surface density and temperature become favorable for their growth. The restructuring of the disk as it becomes unstable, the…
We analyse the evolution of turbulence and gravitational instability of a galactic disc in a quasi-steady state governed by cosmological inflow. We focus on the possibility that the coupling between the in-streaming gas and the disc is…
Planetesimal formation is one of the most important unsolved problems in planet formation theory. In particular, rocky planetesimal formation is difficult because silicate dust grains are easily broken when they collide. Recently, it has…