Central mass accumulation in nuclear spirals

In central regions of non-axisymmetric galaxies high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations indicate spiral shocks, which are capable of transporting gas inwards. The efficiency of transport is lower at smaller radii, therefore instead of all gas dropping onto the galactic centre, a roughly uniform distribution of high-density gas develops in the gaseous nuclear spiral downstream from the shock, and the shear in gas is very low there. These are excellent conditions for star formation. This mechanism is likely to contribute to the process of (pseudo-) bulge formation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the IAU Symposium 245, "Formation and Evolution of Galaxy Bulges

Nuclear spirals: gas in asymmetric galactic potential with a massive black hole

Nuclear spirals can provide a wealth of information about the nuclear potential in disc galaxies. They form naturally as a gas response to non-axisymmetry in the gravitational potential, even if the degree of this asymmetry is very small. Linear wave theory well describes weak nuclear spirals, but stronger asymmetries in the potential induce waves beyond the linear regime, which appear as spiral shocks. If a central massive black hole (MBH) is present, spiral shocks can extend all the way to its immediate vicinity, and generate gas inflow up to 0.03 Msun/yr. This coincides with the accretion rates needed to power local Active Galactic Nuclei.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the IAU Symp.222 "The Interplay among Black Holes, Stars and ISM in Galactic Nuclei

Orbital Support of Fast and Slow Inner Bars in Double Barred Galaxies

We analyze how the orbital support of the inner bar in a double-barred galaxy (nested bars) depends on the angular velocity (i.e. pattern speed) of this bar. We study orbits in seven models of double bars using the method of invariant loops. The range of pattern speed is covered exhaustively. We find that not all pattern speeds are allowed when the inner bar rotates in the same direction as the outer bar. Below a certain minimum pattern speed orbital support for the inner bar abruptly disappears, while at high values of this speed the orbits indicate an increasingly round bar that looks more like a twist in the nuclear isophotes than a dynamically independent component. For values between these two extremes, orbits supporting the inner bar extend further out as the bar's pattern speed decreases, their corresponding loops become more eccentric, pulsate more, and their rotation becomes increasingly non-uniform, as they speed up and slow down in their motion. Lower pattern speeds also lead to a less coherent bar, as the pulsation and acceleration increasingly varies among the loops supporting the inner bar. The morphologies of fast and slow inner bars expected from the orbital structure studied here are recently recovered observationally by decomposition of double barred galaxies. Our findings allow us to link the observed morphology to the dynamics of the inner bar.Comment: ApJ accepte

On algebraic construction of certain integrable and super-integrable systems

We propose a new construction of two-dimensional natural bi-Hamiltonian systems associated with a very simple Lie algebra. The presented construction allows us to distinguish three families of super-integrable monomial potentials for which one additional first integral is quadratic, and the second one can be of arbitrarily high degree with respect to the momenta. Many integrable systems with additional integrals of degree greater than two in momenta are given. Moreover, an example of a super-integrable system with first integrals of degree two, four and six in the momenta is found.Comment: 37 page

The Influence of Multi-agent Cooperation on the Efficiency of Taxi Dispatching

The paper deals with the problem of the optimal collaboration scheme in taxi dispatching between customers, taxi drivers and the dispatcher. The authors propose three strategies that differ by the amount of information exchanged between agents and the intensity of cooperation between taxi drivers and the dispatcher. The strategies are evaluated by means of a microscopic multi-agent transport simulator (MATSim) coupled with a dynamic vehicle routing optimizer (DVRP Optimizer), which allows to realistically simulate dynamic taxi services as one of several different transport means, all embedded into a realistic environment. The evaluation is carried out on a scenario of the Polish city of Mielec. The results obtained prove that the cooperation between the dispatcher and taxi drivers is of the utmost importance, while the customer–dispatcher communication may be reduced to minimum and compensated by the use of more sophisticated dispatching strategies, thereby not affecting the quality of service