Global Spiral Arms Formation by Non-linear Interaction of Wakelets

TL;DR

This paper investigates how local density enhancements called wakelets interact non-linearly to form galactic spiral arms, using N-body simulations to clarify the underlying mechanism and its dependence on galactic parameters.

Contribution

It demonstrates the non-linear interaction of wakelets as a key process in spiral arm formation and clarifies its dependence on galactic disk properties, unifying previous conflicting results.

Findings

Non-linear wakelet interactions connect to form spiral arms.

Wave number of interactions depends on disk mass and shear rate.

Results align with swing amplification theory.

Abstract

The formation and evolution of galactic spiral arms is not yet clearly understood despite many analytic and numerical work. Recently, a new idea has been proposed that local density enhancements (waklets) arising in the galactic disk connect with each other and make global spiral arms. However, the understanding of this mechanism is not yet sufficient. We analyze the interaction of wakelets by using N-body simulations including perturbing point masses, which are heavier than individual N-body particles and act as the seeds for wakelets. Our simulation facilitates more straightforward interpretation of numerical results than previous work by putting a certain number of perturbers in a well-motivated configuration. We detected a clear sign of non-linear interaction between wakelets, which make global spiral arms by connecting two adjacent wakelets. We found that the wave number of the strongest non-linear interaction depends on galactic disk mass and shear rate. This dependence is consistent with the prediction of swing amplification mechanism and other previous results. Our results provide unification of previous results which seemed not consistent with each other.