Spiral instabilities: Mode saturation and decay

TL;DR

This paper investigates how linear spiral instabilities in disc galaxy simulations saturate and decay, revealing correlations between growth rates and amplitudes, and clarifying the physical mechanisms behind spiral pattern behavior.

Contribution

It demonstrates the saturation process of spiral instabilities, links growth rates to limiting amplitudes, and clarifies the role of orbit deflections and resonances in mode decay.

Findings

Tight correlation between mode growth rate and limiting amplitude.

Non-linear orbit deflections near corotation cause mode saturation.

Scattering at the inner Lindblad resonance is insignificant until after saturation.

Abstract

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 the properties of the disc affect the limiting amplitude of the spirals. Once again, we employ idealized models that each possess a single instability that we follow until it has run its course. Remarkably, we find a tight correlation between the growth rate of the mode and its limiting amplitude, albeit from only six simulations. We show that non-linear orbit deflections near corotation cause the mode to saturate, and that the more time available in a slowly-growing mode creates the critical deflections at lower amplitude. We also find that scattering at the inner Lindblad resonance is insignificant until after the mode has saturated. Our objective in this series of papers, which we believe we have now achieved, has been to develop a convincing and well-documented account of the physical behaviour of the spiral patterns that have been observed in simulations by others, and by ourselves, for many decades. Understanding the simulations is an important step towards the greater objective, which is to find observational evidence from galaxies that could confront the identified mechanism.