arXiv subjects

J. A. Sellwood

Publications and source records attributed to J. A. Sellwood.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2006

Galactic Warps Induced By Cosmic Infall

Recent ideas for the origin and persistence of the warps commonly observed in disc galaxies have focused on cosmic infall. We present N-body simulations of an idealized form of cosmic infall onto a disc galaxy and obtain a warp that closely resembles those observed. The inner disc tilts remarkably rigidly, indicating strong cohesion due to self-gravity. The line of nodes of the warp inside $R_{26.5} ~ 4.5 \Rd$ is straight, while that beyond $R_{26.5}$ generally forms a loosely-wound, leading spiral in agreement with Briggs's rules. We focus on the mechanism of the warp and show that the leading spiral arises from the torques from the misaligned inner disc and its associated inner oblate halo. The fact that the line of nodes of most warps forms a leading spiral might imply that the disc mass is significant in the centre. If the line of nodes can be traced to very large radii in future observations, it may reveal information on the mass distribution of the outer halo. The warp is not strongly damped by the halo because the precession rate of the inner disc is slow and the inner halo generally remains aligned with the inner disc. Thus even after the imposed quadrupolar perturbation is removed, the warp persists for a few Gyrs, by which time another infall event can be expected.

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arXiv2005

Bar-Halo Friction in Galaxies II: Metastability

It is well-established that strong bars rotating in dense halos generally slow down as they lose angular momentum to the halo through dynamical friction. Angular momentum exchanges between the bar and halo particles take place at resonances. While some particles gain and others lose, friction arises when there is an excess of gainers over losers. This imbalance results from the generally decreasing numbers of particles with increasing angular momentum, and friction can therefore be avoided if there is no gradient in the density of particles across the major resonances. Here we show that anomalously weak friction can occur for this reason if the pattern speed of the bar fluctuates upwards. After such an event, the density of resonant halo particles has a local inflexion created by the earlier exchanges, and bar slowdown can be delayed for a long period; we describe this as a metastable state. We show that this behavior in purely collisionless N-body simulations is far more likely to occur in methods with adaptive resolution. We also show that the phenomenon could arise in nature, since bar-driven gas inflow could easily raise the bar pattern speed enough to reach the metastable state. Finally, we demonstrate that mild external, or internal, perturbations quickly restore the usual frictional drag, and it is unlikely therefore that a strong bar in a galaxy having a dense halo could rotate for a long period without friction.

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arXiv2005

Bar-halo Friction in Galaxies I: Scaling Laws

It has been known for some time that rotating bars in galaxies slow due to dynamical friction against the halo. However, recent attempts to use this process to place constraints on the dark matter density in galaxies and possibly also to drive dark matter out of the center have been challenged. This paper uses simplified numerical experiments to clarify several aspects of the friction mechanism. I explicitly demonstrate the Chandrasekhar scaling of the friction force with bar mass, halo density, and halo velocity dispersion. I present direct evidence that exchanges between the bar and halo orbits at major resonances are responsible for friction and study both individual orbits and the net changes at these resonances. I also show that friction alters the phase space density of particles in the vicinity of a major resonance, which is the reason the magnitude of the friction force depends on the prior evolution. I demonstrate that bar slow down can be captured correctly in simulations having modest spatial resolution and practicable numbers of particles. Subsequent papers in this series delineate the dark matter density that can be tolerated in halos of different density profiles.

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arXiv2005

Anomalously Weak Dynamical Friction in Halos

A bar rotating in a pressure-supported halo generally loses angular momentum and slows down due to dynamical friction. Valenzuela & Klypin report a counter-example of a bar that rotates in a dense halo with little friction for several Gyr, and argue that their result invalidates the claim by Debattista & Sellwood that fast bars in real galaxies require a low halo density. We show that it is possible for friction to cease for a while should the pattern speed of the bar fluctuate upward. The reduced friction is due to an anomalous gradient in the phase-space density of particles at the principal resonance created by the earlier evolution. The result obtained by Valenzuela & Klypin is probably an artifact of their adaptive mesh refinement method, but anyway could not persist in a real galaxy. The conclusion by Debattista & Sellwood still stands.

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arXiv2005

The Compression of Dark Matter Halos by Baryonic Infall

The initial radial density profiles of dark matter halos are laid down by gravitational collapse in hierarchical structure formation scenarios and are subject to further compression as baryons cool and settle to the halo centers. We here describe an explicit implementation of the algorithm, originally developed by Young, to calculate changes to the density profile as the result of adiabatic infall in a spherical halo model. Halos with random motion are more resistant to compression than are those in which random motions are neglected, which is a key weakness of the simple method widely employed. Young's algorithm results in density profiles in excellent agreement with those from N-body simulations. We show how the algorithm may be applied to determine the original uncompressed halos of real galaxies, a step which must be computed with care in order to enable a confrontation with theoretical predictions from theories such as LCDM.

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arXiv2004

Mass Models for Spiral Galaxies from 2-D Velocity Maps

We model the mass distributions of 40 high surface brightness spiral galaxies inside their optical radii, deriving parameters of mass models by matching the predicted velocities to observed velocity maps. We use constant mass-to-light disk and bulge models, and we have tried fits with no halo and with three different halo density profiles. The data require a halo in most, but not all, cases, while in others the best fit occurs with negligible mass in the luminous component, which we regard as unphysical. All three adopted halo profiles lead to fits of about the same quality, and our data therefore do not constrain the functional form of the halo profile. The halo parameters display large degeneracies for two of the three adopted halo functions, but the separate luminous and dark masses are better constrained. However, the fitted disk and halo masses vary substantially between the adopted halo models, indicating that even high quality 2-D optical velocity maps do not provide significant constraints on the dark matter content of a galaxy. We demonstrate that data from longslit observations are likely to provide still weaker constraints. We conclude that additional information is needed in order to constrain the separate disk and halo masses in a galaxy.

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arXiv2003

The Destruction of Bars by Central Mass Concentrations

More than two thirds of disk galaxies are barred to some degree. Many today harbor massive concentrations of gas in their centers, and some are known to possess supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their associated stellar cusps. Previous theoretical work has suggested that a bar in a galaxy could be dissolved by the formation of a mass concentration in the center, although the precise mass and degree of central concentration required is not well-established. We report an extensive study of the effects of central masses on bars in high-quality N-body simulations of galaxies. We have varied the growth rate of the central mass, its final mass and degree of concentration to examine how these factors affect the evolution of the bar. Our main conclusions are: (1) Bars are more robust than previously thought. The central mass has to be as large as several percent of the disk mass to completely destroy the bar on a short timescale. (2) For a given mass, dense objects cause the greatest reduction in bar amplitude, while significantly more diffuse objects have a lesser effect. (3) The bar amplitude always decreases as the central mass is grown, and continues to decay thereafter on a cosmological time-scale. (4) The first phase of bar-weakening is due to the destruction by the CMC of lower-energy, bar-supporting orbits, while the second phase is a consequence of secular changes to the global potential which further diminish the number of bar-supporting orbits. We provide detailed phase-space and orbit analysis to support this suggestion. Thus current masses of SMBHs are probably too small, even when dressed with a stellar cusp, to affect the bar in their host galaxies. The molecular gas concentrations found in some barred galaxies are also too diffuse to affect the amplitude of the bar significantly.

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arXiv2003

The AGN-Disk Dynamics Connection

Any connection between central activity and the large-scale dynamics of disk galaxies requires an efficient mechanism to remove angular momentum from the orbiting material. The only viable means of achieving inflow from kiloparsec scales is through gravitational stresses created by bars and/or mergers. The inflow of gas in bars today appears to stall at a radius of few hundred parsec, however, forming a nuclear ring. Here we suggest that bars in the early Universe may have avoided this problem, and propose that the progenitors of central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are created by gas that is driven deep into the centers of galaxies by bars in the early stages of disk formation. The coincidence of the QSO epoch with galaxy formation, the short lifetimes of QSOs, and the existence of SMBHs in the centers of most bright galaxies are all naturally accounted for by disk dynamics in this model. The progenitor SMBHs are the seeds for brighter QSO flares during galaxy mergers. We present a new study of bar weakening by central mass concentrations, which shows that bars are less easily destroyed than previously thought. An extremely massive and compact central mass can, however, dissolve the bar, which creates a pseudo-bulge component in the center of the disk.

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arXiv2003

The Survival of Bars with Central Mass Concentrations

Many barred galaxies today harbor massive concentrations of gas in their centers, and some are known to possess supermassive black holes (SBHs) and their associated stellar cusps. Previous theoretical work has suggested that a bar in a galaxy could be dissolved by the formation of a mass concentration in the center, although the precise mass and degree of central concentration required is not well-established. Here we report an extensive study of the effects of central masses on bars in high-quality N-body simulations of galaxies. We study models containing both strong and weak bars, and quantify the change in bar amplitude as a mass concentration is grown in their centers. We find that bars are more robust than previously thought. We have varied the growth rate of the central mass, its final mass and the degree of concentration of the mass. Our main conclusions are: (1) the central mass has to be as large as several percent of the disk mass to completely destroy the bar; (2) for a given mass, objects whose scale-length is a few pc or less cause the greatest reduction in bar amplitude, while significantly more diffuse objects have a lesser effect; and (3) the bar amplitude always decreases as the central mass is grown, and continues to decay thereafter on a cosmological timescale. Thus the masses of SBHs are probably too small, even when dressed with a stellar cusp, to affect the bar amplitude significantly.

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arXiv2002

Bars and Dark Matter Halo Cores

Self-consistent bars that form in galaxies embedded within cuspy halos are unable to flatten the cusp. Short bars form in models with quasi-flat rotation curves. They lose angular momentum to the halo through dynamical friction, but the continuous concentration of mass within the disk as the bar grows actually compresses the halo further, overwhelming any density reduction due to the modest angular momentum transfer to the halo. Thus the Weinberg-Katz proposed solution to the non-existence of the predicted cuspy halos from CDM simulations would seem to be unworkable. I also find that the concerns over the performance of N-body codes raised by these authors do not apply to the methods used here.

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arXiv2002

Uncertainties in Spiral Galaxy Projection Parameters

We investigate the impact of nonaxisymmetric structure on estimates of galaxy inclinations and position angles. A new minimization technique is used to obtain estimates of inclination and position angle from a global fit to either photometric or kinematic data. We discuss possible systematic uncertainties which are much larger than statistical uncertainties. Our investigation reveals that systematic uncertainties associated with fitting photometric data dominate the formal statistical uncertainties. For our sample of inclined galaxies, we estimate that nonaxisymmetric features introduce inclination and position angle uncertainties of approximately 5 degrees, on average. The magnitudes of these uncertainties weaken the arguments for intrinsically elliptical galaxy disks.

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arXiv2002

Scattering of Stars by Transient Spiral Waves

Transient spiral waves of moderate amplitude cause substantial changes to the angular momenta of many stars in a galaxy disk. Stars near to corotation are affected most strongly: for a wave of ~20% overdensity, the rms change for particles near to corotation is ~18% of their initial angular momenta. Yet these changes produce no increase in random motion near corotation, while the same wave causes mild heating near its Lindblad resonances. The direction of radial migration depends both on initial location relative to corotation and on azimuth. Streamlines of cold gas become very significantly distorted before they cross, suggesting that gas is also mixed radially by this mechanism. Such continuous churning of the disk has profound implications for abundance gradients in galaxies. Furthermore, it is quite possible that the Sun has migrated significantly from its radius of birth, consistent with the claims of Wielen et al.

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arXiv2001

Distinguishing Dark Matter from Modified Gravity

Dynamical mass discrepancies in galaxies have two possible explanations: the existence of large amounts of dark matter or the breakdown of Newtonian gravity. True dark matter halos of galaxies could differ in several respects from apparent halos inferred from misinterpreted modified gravity, and we discuss two observational tests to probe these differences. Modified gravity gives generic, geometrical predictions for the shapes of apparent halos, and also requires that the inferred excess mass strongly correlates with the visible baryonic mass. Thus modified gravity is more easily falsified, but we find both hypotheses to be consistent with the meager data on galaxy and cluster halos; dark matter is not required by current data. We strongly encourage the acquisition of more data, which could ultimately eliminate one or other of these possibilities.

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arXiv2001

Ellipticals and Bars: Central Masses and Friction

I give a very brief review of aspects of internal dynamics that affect the global shape of a galaxy, focusing on triaxiality, bars and warps. There is general agreement that large central masses can destroy triaxial shapes, but recent simulations of this process seem to suffer from numerical difficulties. Central black holes alone are probably not massive enough to destroy global triaxiality, but when augmented by star and gas concentrations in barred galaxies, the global shape may be affected. Even though we do not understand the origin of bars in galaxies, they are very useful as probes of the dark matter density of the inner halo. Finally, I note that dynamical friction acts to reduce a misalignment between the spin axes of the disk and halo, producing a nice warp in the outer disk which has many of the properties of observed galactic warps.

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arXiv2001

Long-lived lop-sided modes of annular disks orbiting a central mass

We demonstrate the existence of long-lived, large-amplitude eccentric modes in massive, annular particle disks in orbit about a central mass. The lopsided modes we have found precess slowly in the prograde direction at a rate which increases with disk mass and decreases with the amplitude of the distortion. The lopsidedness generally survives for as long as we run the calculations and may last indefinitely; we found no significant decay in over 700 disk-particle orbits in one case. These strongly non-linear modes are readily created using a number of different perturbing rules, but we find no evidence for linear instabilities in unperturbed disks. Our results suggest that Tremaine's eccentric disk model for the nucleus of M31 may be viable, but none of our models matches all aspects of the observational data.

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arXiv2000

Does Dark Matter Exist?

The success of the Lambda-CDM model on large scales does not extend down to galaxy scales. We list a dozen problems of the dark matter hypothesis, some of which arise in specific models for the formation of structure in the universe, while others are generic and require fine tuning in any dark matter theory. Modifications to the theory, such as adding properties to the DM particles beyond gravitational interactions, or simply a better understanding of the physics of galaxy formation, may resolve some problems, but a number of conspiracies and correlations are unlikely to yield to this approach. The alternative is that mass discrepancies result from of a non-Newtonian law of gravity, a hypothesis which avoids many of the more intractable problems of dark matter. A modified law of gravity is not without formidable difficulties of its own, but it is no longer obvious that they are any more daunting than those facing DM.

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arXiv2000

The Disk and Dark Halo Mass of the Barred Galaxy NGC 4123. I. Observations

The non-circular streaming motions in barred galaxies are sensitive to the mass of the bar and can be used to lift the degeneracy between disk and dark matter halo encountered when fitting axisymmetric rotation curves of disk galaxies. In this paper, we present photometric and kinematic observations of NGC 4123, a barred galaxy of modest size (V_rot = 130 km/sec, L = 0.7 L_*), which reveal strong non-circular motions. The bar has straight dust lanes and an inner Lindblad resonance. The disk of NGC 4123 has no sign of truncation out to 10 scale lengths, and star-forming regions are found well outside R_25. A Fabry-Perot H-alpha velocity field shows velocity jumps of >100 km/sec at the location of the dust lanes within the bar, indicating shocks in the gas flow. VLA observations yield the velocity field of the H I disk. Axisymmetric mass models yield good fits to the rotation curve outside the bar regionfor disk I-band M/L of 2.25 or less, and dark halos with either isothermal or power-law profiles can fit the data well. In a companion paper, we model the full 2-D velocity field, including non-circular motions, to determine the stellar M/L and the mass of the dark halo.

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arXiv2000

The Disk and Dark Halo Mass of the Barred Galaxy NGC 4123. II. Fluid-Dynamical Models

We report a dynamical determination of the separate contributions of disk and dark halo masses to the rotation curve of a spiral galaxy. We use fluid-dynamical models of gas flow in the barred galaxy NGC 4123 to constrain the dynamical properties of the galaxy: disk M/L, bar pattern speed, and the central density and scale radius of the dark halo. We derive a realistic barred potential directly from the light distribution. For each model we assume a value of the stellar M/L and a bar pattern speed Omega_p and add a dark halo to fit the rotation curve. We then compute the gas flow velocities with a 2-D gas dynamical code, and compare the model flow patterns to a 2-D velocity field derived from Fabry-Perot observations. The strong shocks and non-circular motions in the observed gas flow require a high stellar M/L and a fast-rotating bar. Models with I-band disk M/L of 2.0 -- 2.5 h_75, or 80 -- 100% of the maximum disk value, are highly favored. The corotation radius of the bar must be <= 1.5 times the bar semi-major axis. These results contradict some recent claimed ``universal'' galaxy disk/halo relations, since NGC 4123 is of modest size (rotation curve maximum 145 km/sec, and V_flat = 130 km/sec) yet is quite disk-dominated. The dark halo of NGC 4123 is less concentrated than favored by current models of dark halos based on cosmological simulations. Since some 30% of bright disk galaxies are strongly barred and have dust lanes indicating shock morphology similar to that of NGC 4123, it is likely that they also have high stellar M/L and low density halos. We suggest that luminous matter dominates inside the optical radius R_25 of high surface brightness disk galaxies.

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