Patterns in the Outer Parts of Galactic Disks

Abstract

This paper describes test particle simulations of the response of the outer parts of Galactic disks to barring and spiral structure. Simulations are conducted for cold Mestel disks and warm quasi-exponential disks with completely flat rotation curves, subjected to pure quadrupoles and logarithmic spirals. Even though the starting velocity distributions are smooth, the end-points of the bar simulations show bimodality and multi-peaked structures at locations near the outer Lindblad resonance (OLR), although spirality can make this smoother. The growth of a bar may cause the disk isophotes to become boxy at the OLR, as stars accummulate particularly along the minor axis. The growth of a bar is also accompanied by substantial heating of the disk stars near the OLR. For the growth of a $10^{10} M_{\rm \odot}$ bar, the radial velocity dispersion is typically quadrupled for initially cold disks (initial \sigmau $\sim 10$ \kms), and typically doubled for disks with final \sigmau $\sim 45$ \kms. Simulations performed of the growth and dissolution of bars give very similar results, demonstrating that the heat once given to disk stars is very difficult to remove.