Axisymmetric bending oscillations of stellar disks

Abstract

Self-gravitating stellar disks with random motion support both exponentially growing and, in some cases, purely oscillatory axisymmetric bending modes, unlike their cold disk counterparts. A razor-thin disk with even a very small degree of random motion in the plane is both unstable and possesses a discrete spectrum of neutral modes, irrespective of the sharpness of the edge. Random motion normal to the disk plane has a stabilizing effect but at the same time allows bending waves to couple to the internal vibrations of the particles, which causes the formerly neutral modes to decay through Landau damping. Focusing first on instabilities, I here determine the degree of random motion normal to the plane needed to suppress global, axisymmetric, bending instabilities in a family of self-gravitating disks. As found previously, bending instabilities are suppressed only when the thickness exceeds that expected from a na\"ıve local criterion when the degree of pressure support within the disk plane is comparable to, or exceeds, the support from rotation. A modest disk thickness is adequate for the bending stability of most disk galaxies, except perhaps near their centers. The discretization of the neutral spectrum in a zero-thickness disk is due to the existence of a turning point for bending waves in a warm disk, which is absent when the disk is cold. When the disk is given a finite thickness, the discrete neutral modes generally become strongly damped through wave-particle interactions. It is surprising therefore that I find some simulations of warm, stable disks can support (quasi-)neutral, large-scale, bending modes that decay very slowly, if at all.