# The effect of rotation on the thermal instability of stratified galactic atmospheres - I. Local analysis

## TL;DR

This study investigates how rotation influences thermal instability in stratified galactic atmospheres, revealing that significant rotation enhances cold structure formation and raises the cooling-to-dynamical time ratio threshold for condensation.

## Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis combining analytical and numerical methods to show rotation's role in thermal instability and cold gas formation in galactic atmospheres.

## Key findings

- Rotation enhances cold structure formation in galactic atmospheres.
- The threshold for condensation increases by up to a factor of 10 with significant rotation.
- Rotation modifies the conditions under which thermal instability leads to cold gas condensation.

## Abstract

Observations show that (i) multiple gas phases can coexist in the atmospheres of galaxies and clusters; (ii) these atmospheres may be significantly rotating in the inner parts, with typical velocities that approach or even exceed the local sound speed. The thermal instability is a natural candidate to explain the formation of cold structures via condensation of a hotter gas phase. Here we systematically study the effect of rotation on the thermal stability of stratified plane-parallel atmospheres, using both analytical arguments and numerical simulations. We find that the formation of cold structures starting from small isobaric perturbations is enhanced in the regions where the rotation of the system is dynamically important (i.e. when the rotational velocity becomes comparable to the sound speed). In particular, the threshold value of the ratio between the cooling and dynamical time $t_{\rm cool}/t_{\rm dyn}$ below which condensations can form is increased by a factor up to $\sim 10$ in the presence of significant rotation. We briefly discuss the implications of our results for galaxies and clusters.