Global Spiral Density Wave Modes in Protoplanetary Disks: Morphology of Spiral Arms

TL;DR

This paper investigates how gravitational instability in protoplanetary disks generates spiral density waves, analyzing their morphology and dependence on disk properties, and distinguishes these from planet-induced spirals, offering insights into observed spiral arms.

Contribution

The study provides a detailed analysis of spiral density wave morphology in self-gravitating disks, highlighting how disk parameters influence spiral arm features and proposing gravitational instability as an alternative explanation for observed spirals.

Findings

Spiral pitch angles are insensitive to boundary conditions.

Gaussian disks have more tightly wound spirals than power law disks.

Pitch angle increases with Toomre's Q and disk aspect ratio.

Abstract

We analyze two-armed global spiral density wave modes generated by gravitational instability in razor-thin, non-viscous, self-gravitating protoplanetary disks to understand the dependence of spiral arm morphology (pitch angle $\alpha$ and amplitude) on various disk conditions. The morphologies of the resulting spiral density wave modes closely resemble observations. Their pitch angles and pattern speeds are insensitive to the boundary conditions adopted. Gaussian disks exhibit more tightly wound spirals (smaller pitch angle) than power law disks under the same conditions. We find that at a fixed disk-to-star mass ratio ($M_d/M_*$), pitch angle increases with average Toomre's stability parameter ($\overline Q$) or average disk aspect ratio ($\overline h$). For a given $\overline Q$, density wave modes with higher $M_d/M_*$ have larger pitch angles, while the behavior reverses for a given $\overline h$. The interdependence between pitch angle and disk properties can be roughly approximated by $\alpha\propto c_s^2/M_d$, where $c_s$ is the sound speed. Our gravitational instability-excited spiral density waves can be distinguished from planet-launched spirals: (1) massive cool disks have spiral pitch angle falling with radius, while low-mass hot disks have spiral pitch angle rising with radius; (2) the profile of spiral amplitude presents several dips and bumps. We propose that gravitational instability-excited density waves can serve as an alternative scenario to explain the observed spiral arms in self-gravitating protoplanetary disks.