Resonant Clumping and Substructure in Galactic Discs

Abstract

We describe a new method for analysing N-body simulations. The method makes a blind search for resonant orbits by making use of the fact that resonant orbits will return to some previously occupied region of phase space. An application of this method is made to the N-body simulation of Shen et al. (2010). The simulation is host to a strong and persistent central bar that drives resonances and angular momentum exchange, even in the outer parts of the disc. We deconstruct the barred disc into it's constituent resonant orbit families. We then study the contribution of each orbit family to the kinematic landscape around the disc

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