Related papers: Spiral Structure as a Recurrent Instability
N-body simulations of disc galaxies that display recurrent transient spiral patterns are comparatively easy to construct, but are harder to understand. In this paper, I summarise the evidence from such experiments that the spiral patterns…
After a short review of the principal theories of spiral structure in galaxies, I describe two new developments. First, it now seems clear that linear theory cannot yield a full description for the development of spiral patterns because…
We argue that self-excited instabilities are the cause of spiral patterns in simulations of unperturbed stellar discs. In previous papers, we have found that spiral patterns were caused by a few concurrent waves, which we claimed were…
We present evidence that recurrent spiral activity, long manifested in simulations of disk galaxies, results from the super-position of a few transient spiral modes. Each mode lasts between 5 and 10 rotations at its corotation radius where…
The rate of internally-driven evolution of galaxy discs is strongly affected by the lifetimes of the spiral patterns they support. Evolution is much faster if the spiral patterns are recurrent short-lived transients rather than long-lived,…
We describe the dynamics of a stream of equally spaced macroscopic particles in orbit around a central body (e.g. a planet or star). A co-orbital configuration of small bodies may be subject to gravitational instability, which takes the…
We consider a particle that is subject to a constant force and scatters inelastically on a vibrating periodically corrugated floor. At small friction and small radius of the circular scatterers the dynamics is dominated by resonances…
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…
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 present experimental measurements on the spontaneous formation of compact spiral structures in vertically-vibrated granular chains. Under weak vibration, when the chain is quasi two-dimensional and self-avoiding, spiral structures emerge…
Spiral waves are striking self-organized coherent structures that organize spatio-temporal dynamics in dissipative, spatially extended systems. In this paper, we provide a conceptual approach to various properties of spiral waves. Rather…
An earlier paper presented the potentially significant discovery that disturbances in simplified simulations of a stellar disc model that was predicted to be stable in linear theory grew to large amplitude over a long period of time. 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…
The structure of spiral waves is investigated in super-excitable reaction-diffusion systems where the local dynamics exhibits multi-looped phase space trajectories. It is shown that such systems support stable spiral waves with broken…
Numerous previous studies have investigated the phenomenon wherein initially spherical N-body systems are distorted to triaxial shapes. We report on an investigation of a previously described orbital instability that should oppose…
This paper continues a series reporting different aspects of the behaviour of disc galaxy simulations that support spiral instabilities. The focus in this paper is to demonstrate how linear spiral instabilities saturate and decay, and how…
Large-scale instabilities occurring in the presence of small-scale turbulent fluctuations are frequently observed in geophysical or astrophysical contexts but are difficult to reproduce in the laboratory. Using extensive numerical…
We present a study of the spiral responses in a stable disc galaxy model to co-orbiting perturbing masses that are evenly spaced around rings. The amplitudes of the responses, or wakes, are proportional to the masses of the perturbations,…
A theoretical and experimental study of the spin-over mode induced by the elliptical instability of a flow contained in a slightly deformed rotating spherical shell is presented. This geometrical configuration mimics the liquid rotating…
The ``galactic shocks'' \citep{fujimoto68,roberts69} is investigated using a full three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations, taking into account self-gravity of the ISM, radiative cooling, and star formation followed by energy feedback…