4,151 research outputs found
The Myth of the Molecular Ring
We investigate the structure of the Milky Way by determining how features in
a spatial map correspond to CO features in a velocity map. We examine
structures including logarithmic spiral arms, a ring and a bar. We explore the
available parameter space, including the pitch angle of the spiral arms, radius
of a ring, and rotation curve. We show that surprisingly, a spiral arm provides
a better fit to the observed molecular ring than a true ring feature. This is
because both a spiral arm, and the observed feature known as the molecular
ring, are curved in velocity longitude space. We find that much of the CO
emission in the velocity longitude map can be fitted by a nearly symmetric 2
armed spiral pattern. One of the arms corresponds to the molecular ring, whilst
the opposite arm naturally reproduces the Perseus arm. Multiple arms also
contribute to further emission in the vicinity of the molecular ring and match
other observed spiral arms. Whether the Galactic structure consists primarily
of two, or several spiral arms, the presence of 2 symmetric logarithmic
spirals, which begin in the vicinity of the ends of the bar, suggest a spiral
density wave associated with the bar.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, accepted by MNRA
The Exciting Lives of Giant Molecular Clouds
We present a detailed study of the evolution of GMCs in a galactic disc
simulation. We follow individual GMCs (defined in our simulations by a total
column density criterion), including their level of star formation, from their
formation to dispersal. We find the evolution of GMCs is highly complex. GMCs
often form from a combination of smaller clouds and ambient ISM, and similarly
disperse by splitting into a number of smaller clouds and ambient ISM. However
some clouds emerge as the result of the disruption of a more massive GMC,
rather than from the assembly of smaller clouds. Likewise in some cases, clouds
accrete onto more massive clouds rather than disperse. Because of the
difficulty of determining a precursor or successor of a given GMC, determining
GMC histories and lifetimes is highly non-trivial. Using a definition relating
to the continuous evolution of a cloud, we obtain lifetimes typically of 4-25
Myr for >10^5 M GMCs, over which time the star formation efficiency
is about 1 %. We also relate the lifetime of GMCs to their crossing time. We
find that the crossing time is a reasonable measure of the actual lifetime of
the cloud, although there is considerable scatter. The scatter is found to be
unavoidable because of the complex and varied shapes and dynamics of the
clouds. We study cloud dispersal in detail and find both stellar feedback and
shear contribute to cloud disruption. We also demonstrate that GMCs do not
behave as ridge clouds, rather massive spiral arm GMCs evolve into smaller
clouds in inter-arm spurs.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
The evolution of Giant Molecular Filaments
In recent years there has been a growing interest in studying giant molecular
filaments (GMFs), which are extremely elongated (> 100pc in length) giant
molecular clouds (GMCs). They are often seen as inter-arm features in external
spiral galaxies, but have been tentatively associated with spiral arms when
viewed in the Milky Way. In this paper, we study the time evolution of GMFs in
a high-resolution section of a spiral galaxy simulation, and their link with
spiral arm GMCs and star formation, over a period of 11Myrs. The GMFs generally
survive the inter-arm passage, although they are subject to a number of
processes (e.g. star formation, stellar feedback and differential rotation)
which can break the giant filamentary structure into smaller sections. The GMFs
are not gravitationally bound clouds as a whole, but are, to some extent,
confined by external pressure. Once they reach the spiral arms, the GMFs tend
to evolve into more substructured spiral arm GMCs, suggesting that GMFs may be
precursors to arm GMCs. Here, they become incorporated into the more complex
and almost continuum molecular medium that makes up the gaseous spiral arm.
Instead of retaining a clear filamentary shape, their shapes are distorted both
by their climb up the spiral potential and their interaction with the gas
within the spiral arm. The GMFs do tend to become aligned with the spiral arms
just before they enter them (when they reach the minimum of the spiral
potential), which could account for the observations of GMFs in the Milky Way.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, MNRAS accepte
Clumpy and fractal shocks, and the generation of a velocity dispersion in molecular clouds
We present an alternative explanation for the nature of turbulence in
molecular clouds. Often associated with classical models of turbulence, we
instead interpret the observed gas dynamics as random motions, induced when
clumpy gas is subject to a shock. From simulations of shocks, we show that a
supersonic velocity dispersion occurs in the shocked gas provided the initial
distribution of gas is sufficiently non-uniform. We investigate the velocity
size-scale relation for simulations of clumpy and
fractal gas, and show that clumpy shocks can produce realistic velocity
size-scale relations with mean . For a fractal
distribution, with a fractal dimension of 2.2 similar to what is observed in
the ISM, we find . The form of the velocity size-scale
relation can be understood as due to mass loading, i.e. the post-shock velocity
of the gas is determined by the amount of mass encountered as the gas enters
the shock. We support this hypothesis with analytical calculations of the
velocity dispersion relation for different initial distributions.
A prediction of this model is that the line-of sight velocity dispersion
should depend on the angle at which the shocked gas is viewed.Comment: 11 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Testing hydrodynamics schemes in galaxy disc simulations
We examine how three fundamentally different numerical hydrodynamics codes follow the evolution of an isothermal galactic disc with an external spiral potential. We compare an adaptive mesh refinement code (RAMSES), a smoothed particle hydrodynamics code (SPHNG), and a volume-discretised meshless code (GIZMO). Using standard refinement criteria, we find that RAMSES produces a disc that is less vertically concentrated and does not reach such high densities as the SPHNG or gizmo runs. The gas surface density in the spiral arms increases at a lower rate for the RAMSES simulations compared to the other codes. There is also a greater degree of substructure in the SPHNG and GIZMOruns and secondary spiral arms are more pronounced. By resolving the Jeansâ length with a greater number of grid cells we achieve more similar results to the Lagrangian codes used in this study. Other alterations to the refinement scheme (adding extra levels of refinement and refining based on local density gradients) are less successful in reducing the disparity between RAMSES and SPHNG/GIZMO. Although more similar, SPHNG displays different density distributions and vertical mass profiles to all modes of gizmo (including the smoothed particle hydrodynamics version). This suggests differences also arise which are not intrinsic to the particular method but rather due to its implementation. The discrepancies between codes (in particular, the densities reached in the spiral arms) could potentially result in differences in the locations and timescales for gravitational collapse, and therefore impact star formation activity in more complex galaxy disc simulations
Giant Molecular clouds: what are they made from, and how do they get there?
We analyse the results of four simulations of isolated galaxies: two with a
rigid spiral potential of fixed pattern speed, but with different degrees of
star-formation induced feedback, one with an axisymmetric galactic potential
and one with a `live' self-gravitating stellar component. Since we use a
Lagrangian method we are able to select gas that lies within giant molecular
clouds (GMCs) at a particular timeframe, and to then study the properties of
this gas at earlier and later times. We find that gas which forms GMCs is not
typical of the interstellar medium at least 50 Myr before the clouds form and
reaches mean densities within an order of magnitude of mean cloud densities by
around 10 Myr before. The gas in GMCs takes at least 50 Myr to return to
typical ISM gas after dispersal by stellar feedback, and in some cases the gas
is never fully recycled. We also present a study of the two-dimensional,
vertically-averaged velocity fields within the ISM. We show that the velocity
fields corresponding to the shortest timescales (that is, those timescales
closest to the immediate formation and dissipation of the clouds) can be
readily understood in terms of the various cloud formation and dissipation
mechanisms. Properties of the flow patterns can be used to distinguish the
processes which drive converging flows (e.g.\ spiral shocks, supernovae) and
thus molecular cloud formation, and we note that such properties may be
detectable with future observations of nearby galaxies.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Simulating the impact of the Smith Cloud
We investigate the future evolution of the Smith Cloud by performing
hydrodynamical simulations of the cloud impact onto the gaseous Milky Way
Galactic disk. We assume a local origin for the cloud and thus do not include a
dark matter component to stabilize it. Our main focus is the cloud's influence
on the local and global star formation rate (SFR) of the Galaxy and whether or
not it leads to an observable event in the far future. Our model assumes two
extremes for the mass of the Smith Cloud, an upper mass limit of 10
M and a lower mass limit of 10 M, compared to the
observational value of a few 10 M. In addition, we also make the
conservative assumption that the entirety of the cloud mass of the extended
Smith Cloud is concentrated within the tip of the cloud. We find that the
impact of the low-mass cloud produces no noticeable change in neither the
global SFR nor the local SFR at the cloud impact site within the galactic disk.
For the high-mass cloud we find a short-term (roughly 5 Myr) increase of the
global SFR of up to 1 M yr, which nearly doubles the normal
Milky Way SFR. This highly localized starburst should be observable.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Radiative Hydrodynamic Simulations of HD209458b: Temporal Variability
We present a new approach for simulating the atmospheric dynamics of the
close-in giant planet HD209458b that allows for the decoupling of radiative and
thermal energies, direct stellar heating of the interior, and the solution of
the full 3D Navier Stokes equations. Simulations reveal two distinct
temperature inversions (increasing temperature with decreasing pressure) at the
sub-stellar point due to the combined effects of opacity and dynamical flow
structure and exhibit instabilities leading to changing velocities and
temperatures on the nightside for a range of viscosities. Imposed on the
quasi-static background, temperature variations of up to 15% are seen near the
terminators and the location of the coldest spot is seen to vary by more than
20 degrees, occasionally appearing west of the anti-solar point. Our new
approach introduces four major improvements to our previous methods including
simultaneously solving both the thermal energy and radiative equations in both
the optical and infrared, incorporating updated opacities, including a more
accurate treatment of stellar energy deposition that incorporates the opacity
relevant for higher energy stellar photons, and the addition of explicit
turbulent viscosity.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
Atmospheric Dynamics of Short-period Extra Solar Gas Giant Planets I: Dependence of Night-Side Temperature on Opacity
More than two dozen short-period Jupiter-mass gas giant planets have been
discovered around nearby solar-type stars in recent years, several of which
undergo transits, making them ideal for the detection and characterization of
their atmospheres. Here we adopt a three-dimensional radiative hydrodynamical
numerical scheme to simulate atmospheric circulation on close-in gas giant
planets. In contrast to the conventional GCM and shallow water algorithms, this
method does not assume quasi hydrostatic equilibrium and it approximates
radiation transfer from optically thin to thick regions with flux-limited
diffusion. In the first paper of this series, we consider
synchronously-spinning gas giants. We show that a full three-dimensional
treatment, coupled with rotationally modified flows and an accurate treatment
of radiation, yields a clear temperature transition at the terminator. Based on
a series of numerical simulations with varying opacities, we show that the
night-side temperature is a strong indicator of the opacity of the planetary
atmosphere. Planetary atmospheres that maintain large, interstellar opacities
will exhibit large day-night temperature differences, while planets with
reduced atmospheric opacities due to extensive grain growth and sedimentation
will exhibit much more uniform temperatures throughout their photosphere's. In
addition to numerical results, we present a four-zone analytic approximation to
explain this dependence.Comment: 35 Pages, 13 Figure
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