Related papers: The Paradox of the Scale-Free Disks
We examine the modes admitted by the Mestel disk, a disk with a globally flat rotation curve. In contrast to previous analyses of this problem by Zang (\cite{1976PhDT........26Z}) and Evans & Read (\cite{1998MNRAS.300...83E},…
I decompose the unstable growing modes of stellar disks to their Fourier components and present the physical mechanism of instabilities in the context of resonances. When the equilibrium distribution function is a non-uniform function of…
This paper reports on the in-plane normal modes in the self-consistent and the cut-out power-law disks. Although the cut-out disks are remarkably stable to bisymmetric perturbations, they are very susceptible to one-armed modes. For this…
Using the linearized Boltzmann equation, we investigate how grooves carved in the phase space of a half-mass Mestel disc can trigger the vigorous growth of two-armed spiral eigenmodes. Such grooves result from the collisional dynamics of a…
The majority of disk galaxies manifest spirals and/or bars that are believed to result from dynamical instabilities. However, some galaxies have featureless disks, which are therefore inferred to be dynamically stable. Yet despite many…
The power-law disks are a family of infinitesimally thin, axisymmetric stellar disks of infinite extent. The rotation curve can be rising, falling or flat. The self-consistent power-law disks are scale-free, so that all physical quantities…
We present idealized models of a razor-thin, axisymmetric, Keplerian stellar disc around a massive black hole, and study non-axisymmetric secular instabilities in the absence of either counter-rotation or loss cones. These discs are…
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 report the finding of a linear, non-axisymmetric, global instability in gas discs around stars, which may be relevant to other astrophysical discs. It takes the form of an $m=1$ mode that grows in the disc density distribution while the…
The origin of spiral patterns in galaxies is still not fully understood. Similar features also develop readily in N-body simulations of isolated cool, collisionless disks, yet even here the mechanism has yet to be explained. In this series…
Self-gravitating stellar disks with random motion support both exponentially growing and, in some cases, purely oscillatory axisymmetric bending modes, unlike their cold disk counterparts. A razor-thin disk with even a very small degree of…
We study the linear $m=1$ counter-rotating instability in a two-component, nearly Keplerian disc. Our goal is to understand these \emph{slow} modes in discs orbiting massive black holes in galactic nuclei. They are of interest not only…
We show that the exponential growth rate of a bar in a stellar disk is substantially greater when the disk is embedded in a live halo than in a rigid one having the same mass distribution. We also find that the vigor of the instability in…
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…
Galaxies exhibit a variety of non-axisymmetric structure (bars, spiral structure, lopsided structure, etc.). These suggest the following general problem: what are the possible stationary configurations of a two-dimensional self-gravitating…
We consider discs that orbit a central object and are tidally perturbed by a circular orbit companion. Such discs are sometimes subject to an eccentric instability due to the effects of certain resonances. Eccentric instabilities may be…
The stability of self-similar power-law disks to non-axially symmetrical disturbances of zero frequency (omega = 0) is discussed. It is established that marginally unstable modes either have (omega = 0) or consist of continua with modes of…
We study the linear perturbations of collisionless near-Keplerian discs. Such systems are models for debris discs around stars and the stellar discs surrounding supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies. Using a finite-element…
We introduce exact analytical solutions of the steady-state hydrodynamic equations of scale-free, self-gravitating gaseous disks with flat rotation curves. We express the velocity field in terms of a stream function and obtain a third-order…
Global stationary configurations of both aligned and logarithmic spiral MHD perturbations are constructed analytically within an axisymmetric background ofrazor-thin scale-free gas disc, which is embedded in an axisymmetric gravitational…