Eccentric Modes in Disks With Pressure and Self-Gravity

Abstract

Accretion disks around stars, or other central massive bodies, can support long-lived, slowly precessing $m=1$ disturbances in which the fluid motion is nearly Keplerian with non-zero eccentricity. We study such `slow modes' in disks that are subject to both pressure and self-gravity forces. We derive a second-order WKB dispersion relation that describes the dynamics quite accurately, and show that the apparently complicated nature of the various modes can be understood in a simple way with the help of a graphical method. We also solve the linearized fluid equations numerically, and show that the results agree with the theory. We find that when self-gravity is weak ($Q\gtrsim 1/h$, where $Q$ is Toomre's parameter, and $h$ is the disk aspect ratio) the modes are pressure dominated. But when self-gravity is strong ($1<Q\lesssim 1/h$), two kinds of gravity-dominated modes appear: one is an aligned elliptical pattern and the other is a one-armed spiral. In the context of protoplanetary disks, we suggest that if the radial eccentricity profile can be measured, it could be used to determine the total disk mass.