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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…
Lopsidedness is common in spiral galaxies. Often, there is no obvious external cause, such as an interaction with a nearby galaxy, for such features. Alternatively, the lopsidedness may have an internal cause, such as a dynamical…
In recent years, it has been demonstrated that massive stars see their infant circumstellar medium shaped into a large, irradiated, gravitationally unstable accretion disc during their early formation phase. Such discs constitute the gas…
Gravitational instability plays an important role in driving gas accretion in massive protostellar discs. Particularly strong is the global gravitational instability, which arises when the disc mass is of order 0.1 of the mass of the…
We explore the linear stability of astrophysical discs exhibiting vertical shear, which arises when there is a radial variation in the temperature or entropy. Such discs are subject to a "vertical-shear instability", which recent nonlinear…
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 use high resolution numerical simulations to study whether gravitational instabilities within circumstellar discs can produce astrometrically detectable motion of the central star. For discs with masses of M_disc = 0.1 M_star, which are…
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…
We present new results on dynamical instabilities in rapidly rotating neutron-stars. In particular, using numerical simulations in full General Relativity, we analyse the effects that the stellar compactness has on the threshold for the…
We report the results of self-gravitating simulations of spiral galaxies, modeled by stellar and gaseous components, developed to investigate in particular the role of dissipation in the evolution of galaxy disks. The gas disk is simulated…
It is shown that pure exponential discs in spiral galaxies are capable of supporting slowly varying discrete global lopsided modes, which can explain the observed features of lopsidedness in the stellar discs. Using linearized fluid…
We discuss the stability of galactic disks in which the energy of interstellar clouds is gained in encounters with expanding supernova remnants and lost in inelastic collisions. Energy gain and loss processes introduce a phase difference…
A self-gravitating, differentially rotating galactic disc under vertical hydrostatic equilibrium is supported by the vertical pressure gradient force against the gravitational collapse. Such discs are known to support various bending modes…
The Rossby wave instability, associated with density bumps in differentially rotating discs, may arise in several different astrophysical contexts, such as galactic or protoplanetary discs. While the linear phase of the instability has been…
We introduce a new model for the structure and evolution of the gas in galactic discs. In the model the gas is in vertical pressure and energy balance. Star formation feedback injects energy and momentum, and non-axisymmetric torques…
A brief review is given of the Rossby wave instability (RWI) in astrophysical discs. In non-self-gravitating discs, around for example a newly forming stars, the instability can be triggered by an axisymmetric bump at some radius $r_0$ in…
Gravitational instabilities play an important role in structure formation of gas-rich high-redshift disc galaxies. In this paper, we revisit the axisymmetric perturbation theory and the resulting growth of structure by taking the realistic…
Models of disc galaxies which invoke viscosity-driven radial flows have long been known to provide a natural explanation for the origin of stellar exponential discs, under the assumption that the star formation and viscous timescales are…
We study the driving of turbulence in star-froming disc galaxies of different masses at different epochs, using an analytic "bathtub" model. The disc of gas and stars is assumed to be in marginal Toomre instability. Turbulence is assumed to…
A typical galactic disc has a finite thickness and in addition to stars it also contains a finite amount of interstellar gas. Here, we investigate the physical impact of the finite thickness of a galactic disc on the disc stability against…