The spiral arms of galaxies

TL;DR

This paper reviews the density wave theory of spiral arms in galaxies, discusses the role of nonlinear effects, and explores the orbital structures supporting spiral arms in both normal and barred galaxies.

Contribution

It provides an analytical perspective on chaotic orbits in barred galaxies and discusses mechanisms for sustaining spiral arms beyond traditional density wave theory.

Findings

Density wave theory explains spiral arms but faces challenges with wave dissipation.

Nonlinear effects are crucial near Lindblad resonances and corotation.

Chaotic orbits can be analytically described in barred galaxy structures.

Abstract

The most important theory of the spiral arms of galaxies is the density wave theory based on the Lin-Shu dispersion relation. However, the density waves move with the group velocity towards the inner Lindblad resonance and tend to disappear. Various mechanisms to replenish the spiral waves have been proposed. Nonlinear effects play an important role near the inner and outer Lindblad resonances and corotation. The orbits supporting the spiral arms are precessing ellipses in normal galaxies that extend up to the 4/1 resonance. On the other hand, in barred galaxies the spiral arms extend along the manifolds of the unstable periodic orbits at the ends of the bar and they are composed of chaotic orbits. However these chaotic orbits can be found analytically.