Simulations of the flocculent spiral M33: what drives the spiral structure?

TL;DR

Simulations of M33 reveal that gravitational instabilities in stars and gas, influenced by stellar feedback levels, drive its spiral structure without requiring external interactions, highlighting the significant role of gas physics in flocculent spirals.

Contribution

This study demonstrates that internal gravitational instabilities and gas physics, rather than galaxy interactions, can produce the observed spiral structure in M33, emphasizing the importance of feedback levels.

Findings

Gravitational instabilities in stars and gas reproduce M33's spiral pattern.

High stellar feedback creates large holes similar to observations.

Gas physics significantly influences large-scale spiral structure.

Abstract

We perform simulations of isolated galaxies in order to investigate the likely origin of the spiral structure in M33. In our models, we find that gravitational instabilities in the stars and gas are able to reproduce the observed spiral pattern and velocity field of M33, as seen in HI, and no interaction is required. We also find that the optimum models have high levels of stellar feedback which create large holes similar to those observed in M33, whilst lower levels of feedback tend to produce a large amount of small scale structure, and undisturbed long filaments of high surface density gas, hardly detected in the M33 disc. The gas component appears to have a significant role in producing the structure, so if there is little feedback, both the gas and stars organise into clear spiral arms, likely due to a lower combined $Q$ (using gas and stars), and the ready ability of cold gas to undergo spiral shocks. By contrast models with higher feedback have weaker spiral structure, especially in the stellar component, compared to grand design galaxies. We did not see a large difference in the behaviour of $Q_{stars}$ with most of these models, however, because $Q_{stars}$ stayed relatively constant unless the disc was more strongly unstable. Our models suggest that although the stars produce some underlying spiral structure, this is relatively weak, and the gas physics has a considerable role in producing the large scale structure of the ISM in flocculent spirals.