Morphology and Dynamics of Galaxies

Pedro J. Llanos* University of Southern California, Astronautical Engineering Department, Los Angeles, California, 90089

We used a simplectic galaxy model that can improve our perception of how galaxies are intrinsically structured. Therefore, we will be able to correlate the morphological characteristics of a galaxy to the environment in which we can find that galaxy. This is a new dynamical systems explanation for how material flows between the arms and the bulge of a galaxy. Homoclinic and heteroclinic connnections can take place between different periodic orbits allowing matter to be transferred throughout the galaxy to create the morphology like spiral arms, bars and rings. This is a nascent field of research with many ideas and approaches, which may be brought to bear on many of the unsolved problems in galactic dynamics and globular cluster dynamics via the invariant manifold theory. In this paper we provide a preliminary characterization of the morphology and dynamics of some barred and ring galaxies.

I. Introduction

nderstanding how matter flows within a galaxy has reinvigorated the study of dynamical systems, such as galaxies and star clusters. Similar to the three-body problem, the n-body gravitational problem is chaotic. This study is relevant to further understand the internal structure of galaxies and be able to explain the observations and the universality of the luminosity profile of elliptical galaxies. Moreover, this research will also enable us to explain the dynamics similarities with respect to that from the electromagnetic plasmas. In this paper we intend to address some of the unknown questions in galactic dynamics: How are galaxies structured? What causes spiral structures in galaxies? Are the bars massive enough to trigger the spiral arms formation? What are the mechanisms that generate the formation of these bars? In order to tackle some of these questions we studied and analyzed the morphology and dynamics of galaxies using a simple Direct N-Body Newtonian Model. We know that galaxies have typically NG1011 stars while globular clusters have of the order of NC105 stars. Even though in this paper we deal with small number of stars N<NC we can obtain a decent understanding of the dynamics of small systems by analyzing the orbits of the stars under their gravitational potential. As in the Restricted Three Body Problem, these galaxies also have stable and unstable Lagrangian Points. We can find families of periodic and quasi-periodic around these points. Using dynamical systems theory we can obtain invariant manifolds that extend in the vicinity of these equilibrium points in such a way that they can generate the visible galactic structures transferring matter within the galaxy. Some of these galaxies have several spiral arms, which are thought to be invariant manifolds of unstable periodic orbits around the Lagrange points [1]. Galaxies can be classified into two branches: normal and barred galaxies. In this study we will focus on some simulations about barred galaxies (SB galaxies) and ring galaxies. SB galaxies are characterized for having well defined bars and heavy disks whereas type SA galaxies have no apparent bar with light disks [4]. There are galaxies that develop a spiral structure. Galaxies that have two symmetric arms called grand-design galaxies comprise 10% of the galaxies, multiple arm galaxies comprise 60% whereas galaxies with multiple spiral fragments or flocculent galaxies comprise 30% of the rest of the galaxies [6]. To model the global structure of galaxies and to further understand the motion of stars in general we need to explore their orbits. In the next section we will analyze the morphology and dynamics of two types of galaxies: a barred galaxy and a ring galaxy. But before, we will briefly explain the methodology used in the simulation. _____________________________
*

Graduate Student, Astronautical Engineering Department, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, 854B Downey Way, RRB 228, Member AIAA, email: llanos@usc.edu

II. Prelim inary Study of M orphology and Dynam ics

We used a symplectic Euler integrator that conserved the energy of the system. After many integration steps, the initial formation evolved to different structures, such as a spiral galaxy with two main arms or a ring galaxy. The spiral galaxy (Figure 1) shows other important features like a bar, outer, inner and nuclear rings and arm bifurcations. The ring galaxy (Figure 4) shows similar features, such as an outer and inner rings but it also shows other features (arms or spokes) connecting the outer and inner rings, and chaotic orbits that connect nuclear rings. Careful inspection of these simulated galaxies show that there is a flow of stars transferring from the central disc of the galaxy to the co-rotating zone forming spiral arms. Due to the differential inner and outer torques in the spiral arms, they evolve into bars, rings and spurs. The dynamical mechanism for this evolution comes from the invariant manifolds of unstable periodic orbits around the Lagrange points of the galaxy potential [1]. We note that these preliminary results show very exciting features, which indicate that invariant manifold theory may be able to explain some of the large-scale structures in galaxies and global clusters.

III. M ethodology
We used Newtons third law to obtain the force between particles using Eq. (1). The force exerted on a particle i is computed as the sum of the forces from the rest of the particles ji in the system. Although this approach provides the correct acceleration of every particle it takes of the order of N2 calculations, which is very time consuming, especially if performed in MATLAB. When we converted to FORTRAN 95 our calculations were of the order of three to four times faster. For simplicity we will assume that all the stars have equal mass and equal to one. The force exerted on one single particle by the N-1 particles is
N 1

Fij = GM i
where the position vector between two particles is:

Mj 2 rij j i rij

(1)

+ ( yi y j ) y rij = ( x i x j ) x

and the magnitude of the position vector is:

rij = ( x i x j ) 2 + ( y i y j ) 2

In the N-body problem, the particles move according to the Newton equations of motion

=v x =F mv

In order to integrate these equations of motion numerically we used the Euler scheme [7], which consists in expressing the position and velocity as linear algebraic expressions. Here the integration time step, t, is 10-4. The mass of each star is assumed to be the same and equal to one. These are arbitrary parameters subject to change depending on the galaxy model. The initial cluster of stars can also be chosen arbitrarily for a certain ellipticity value. In this paper we analyzed several different galaxy examples for different ellipticities and number of stars. Every particle must be assigned with a position in the galaxy. The initial conditions are expressed in polar coordinates (r,) such that they are converted to (x,y) coordinates:

x = r cos y = r sin

(2)

The angle is randomly determined between 0 and 2 and the initial r-coordinate is also randomly distributed between 0 and . The initial velocities (Vx,Vy) of the particles can be determined by taking the derivative of Eq.(2) with respect to time.

IV. Galaxy M odeling

In the remainder of the paper we would like to explain some of the distinctive features of some galactic simulations, such as outer, inner and nuclear rings, spiral arms and bars. In this section we will discuss each of these characteristic morphologies. First, we will start analyzing the spiral arms, then, the outer, inner and nuclear rings, and we will close this section studying the bar of an elliptical galaxy. We will end up our study with an example on a ring galaxy. Finally, we will analyze the radial and tangential velocity profiles of the ring galaxy. A. Spiral Arms We know that molecules of water in the sea do not move very far when there is a wave passing through. Similarly, stars do not move very far either from their non-perturbed orbits to create a spiral density wave or spiral arm. We can observe (Figure 1) this phenomenon in the quasi-periodic orbit that is formed around the outer ring of the galaxy. In this simulation, the galaxy shows a trailing structure where the tips of the arms point in opposite direction of rotation. This structure might be due to the quasi-static density waves, that is, waves with mass density larger than the average mass density. These leading structures are prevalent since leading waves cannot carry angular momentum outwardly which can be explained by overreflected density wave signals between the outer disk where the wave energy density is positive and the inner disk where the wave energy density is negative. The spiral density waves carry negative angular momentum, which is deposited into the inner disk. The mass of the disk then falls into the center favoring the nuclear reactions for star formation. This overrreflection process [4] occurs where the spiral pattern co-rotates with the disk such that the waves produced at the corotation zone could form global modes that are supported by the stellar gas. If there is enough angular momentum that has been transported outwardly, the reflected signal will have larger amplitude that the initial one that entered the corotating zone. This amplified signal may interact with any possible feedback processes from the central regions of the galaxy generating global instabilities that may produce torques inside the bulge. Moreover, if a feedback process did not exist the amplified short trailing wave would propagate inwards winding down and tightening the spiral structure. Since the disk is dynamically warmer there are global modes that grow when energy and angular momentum are carried towards the outer parts of the disk (feedback). These modes [2] are interrupted by the inner Lindblad resonances (ILR) when the stars meet slower rotating density wave, which is in resonance with their frequency of the co-rotating zone.

1a. 1b. Figure 1a: Spiral arms and quasi-periodic orbits in a galaxy formation after 500 integration steps. 1b: Galaxy formation after 1000 integration steps. 3

Spiral arms cannot last forever because there are torques between the inner and outer parts of the spiral arms such that the angular momentum is transferred outwardly. As time evolves, the spiral arms tend to become bars. As we will mention later, orbits in a bar are symmetric with respect to the bar but orbits in a spiral have various orientations. This orientation effect is more dominant in SB galaxies [3]. We will talk more about the orientation of different orbits later in the section. Figure 1a shows a galaxy simulation with 2500 stars with an ellipticity of the initial bulge of 0.1. After 500 integration steps we obtained the corresponding spiral arms, which mimic the simulated data very closely. In this case the spiral arms winding around the galaxy are longer and closer to the center of the galaxy due to the lower density of stars that they carry. Notice that both the spiral arms and the quasi-periodic orbits formed are better defined (Figure 2a) as the formation progresses. This simulation mimics the real galaxy formation, M91 (Figure 2b) with spiral arms moving counterclockwise and a clear bar.

2a. 2b. Figure 2a: Spiral arms and quasi-periodic orbit in a galaxy formation after 1500 integration steps. 2b: Real Galaxy Formation, M91 (SB). Figure 2a shows a quasi-periodic orbit (QPO) that supports the bar inside corotation. This orbit forms a ring at the same time that it supports the spiral structure outside corotation. On the other hand, Figure 3a shows a more chaotic orbit (QPO-4) in black that transfers matter between the spiral arms and the rings. As for the spiral arms, we see that in Figure 1 there is an arm bifurcation on the left spiral arm. The spiral arms of this galaxy simulation seem to be longer and less populated as the galaxy formation progresses. B. Outer and Inner Rings To further understand the galactic evolution we will study and analyze the rings. These structures are places of enhanced star formation. We can distinguish between three types of rings: inner, outer and nuclear rings. Nuclear rings are the smallest rings and are formed normally inside the bar. Inner rings encircle the ends of the bars. Outer rings are larger structures than inner rings (usually about two times the size of inner rings) and can be elongated structures perpendicular to the bar [5] as seen in Figure 3a. Some of these rings may be formed due to internal non-axisymmetric perturbations in the form of density waves that may be generated in the bar, in the oval surrounding the bar or in the spiral arms.

3a. 3b. Figure 3a: Formation of concentric quasi-periodic orbits QPO-1 (cyan), QPO-2 (magenta), QPO-3 (blue) QPO-4 (black) around the inner ring and a quasi-periodic orbit QPO-B1 (green) along the bar of the galaxy. 3b: Formation of a quasi-periodic orbit around the inner ring and QPO-B1 along the bar. In Figure 3a we notice several quasi-periodic orbits: QPO-1 (cyan), QPO-2 (magenta) and QPO-3 (blue) are oval type of orbits perpendicular to the bar. The fact that these orbits are perpendicular to the bar indicates that they are potential outer Linblad ring (OLR) candidates [5]. QPO-B1 (green) is an orbit elongated along the bar; therefore, it is a good candidate to be a ultra-harmonic ring (UHR). Orbits become more elongated near a resonance. The size of QPO-3 is twice the size of QPO-1, QPO-2 is 5/3 larger the size of QPO-1. Finally, we obtained a more chaotic orbit (QPO-4) that exchanges material between the spiral arms and the QPO-3.

C. The Bar The fact that there is a bar formed is an indication that the old stellar disk of the galaxy is heavy [3]. We can see different quasi-periodic orbits that extend along the bar of the galaxy. In our simulation (Figure 1b), the length of the bar extends to the inner ring. We can find chaotic orbits around these rings. These orbits adopt a dog-bone shape, that is, they look like straight bars in the middle but they expand sideways towards the end of the bar before reaching the quasi-periodic orbit formed around the inner ring. Therefore, due to the fact that there is a larger conglomeration of stars on the center of the bar, highly elongated orbits are formed about the center of the galaxy. These orbits maybe formed when there is an energy exchange between a density wave and the stars. We can see this exchange of material [3] in the form of rapid oscillations or quasi-periodic orbits (Figure 3c, 3d). There are several factors that support the formation of the bar [2]. The first one is that there is an increase of density along an orbit due to the angular momentum. Second, the orbits elongate towards the ends of the bar bringing the material outwardly. Third, there is a conglomeration of orbits between the inner Linblad ring (ILR) and the co-rotation zone. As we will see in our simulation, the bar formed is quite elongated but its thickness is less well defined because recognizing the edge-on barred galaxy is a difficult task. Along this elongated and rigid bar we can find orbits where stars could flow into and out of the bar. In this simulation these orbits are symmetric with respect to the bar. In Figure 3c we show a clear example of three orbits, QPO-B1 (blue), QPO-B-2 (magenta) and QPO-B3 (green) aligned along the bar, which can be good candidates of UHR [5]. For the same galaxy formation (Figure 3d) we explored other orbits QPO-B4 (yellow) and QPO-B5 (cyan). QPO-B5 is the most elongated and narrow orbit along the bar axis extending to the size of the diameter of the QPO-Inner ring. Therefore, QPO-B5 has larger resonance frequency than any of the other orbits in the bar. QPO-B4 shows a misalignment yielding the lowest resonance frequency among the orbits in the

bar. QPO-B4 is also an orbit formed in the bar but it tends to expand outwardly on the sides of the bar connecting with the QPO Inner ring.

3c. 3d. Figure 3c: Quasi Periodic Orbits along the bar (QPO-B) of the galaxy. QPO-B1 (blue), QPO-B2 (magenta), QPO-B3 (green). Red dots are the simulated stars forming the bar of the galaxy. 3d: Quasi Periodic Orbits along the bar of the galaxy. QPO-B4 (yellow), QPO-B5 (cyan). Red dots are the simulated stars forming the bar of the galaxy. If enough mass has been accumulated in the disk, bar instabilities may occur. Consequently, the bar can generate a net torque on the gas transferring angular momentum. This torque changes sign at each major resonance [5]. The torque is positive between the corotation zone (CR) and the OLR whereas it is negative between CR and ILR. Therefore, this torque has a crucial effect in how the gas is accumulated forming ring structures at the Linblad and ultra harmonic resonances. That is, the gas is moved towards the ILR or OLR to form these ring structures after the CR is been depopulated. D. Ring Galaxy The use of invariant manifold theory to explain how matter flows in an N-Body system has many applications to the study of the dynamics of galaxies and star clusters. Similar to the three-body problem, the NBody gravitational problem is also chaotic. Many of the global features of galaxies such as bars, rings, and arms may be explained by the chaotic transport and resulting morphology controlled by the invariant manifolds of unstable periodic orbits in the N-Body Problem. This simulation shows exciting results as we can see some similarities between the real galaxies [8] and their corresponding simulations (Figure 4). We used an original formation of 3500 stars with an ellipticity of 1.0 and obtained after 1250 integration steps. This galaxy simulation shows a clear outer ring (red), an inner ring (magenta) and the bulge of the galaxy. In this simulation, rings of different sizes coexist together. The outer and inner rings depicted in Figure 4a have nearly circular shapes and the nuclear rings are slightly oval shaped. Both outer and inner rings are connected through many long spurs, which are thought to be the invariant manifolds (Figure 5a) that transport material between the rings. Figure 5a represents the top right corner of Figure 4a. Here, the small arrows represent the direction of stars moving from the outer ring towards the inner ring.

4a.

4b.

Figure 4a: Galaxy simulation with 3500 stars, ellipticity of 1.0 and 1500 integration steps. 4b. Cartwheel ring galaxy (A0035-335). From our simulation (Figure 6), we see that this transport behaves like a pulse with wavefronts. As the wavefront expands and contracts the material is transported between rings as we can see in the network of spokes between the inner and outer ring. Taking a closer look to the bulge of the ring galaxy (Figure 5b) we notice that there are other features, such as nuclear rings. Transport of material also occurs between nuclear ring 1 (green) and nuclear ring 2 (yellow) through chaotic orbits (magenta). Notice that nuclear ring 1 has more of an oval shape than other nuclear rings. It looks like this nuclear ring is normal to a diffuse bar formed in the center of the galaxy. The size of the quasi-periodic orbit of the outer ring (red) is 2.22 larger than the size of the inner ring (magenta). The radius of the inner ring is 2.25 times larger than the nuclear ring 3 (black), which is twice the size of nuclear ring 2. This intermediate ring is about 2.61 larger than nuclear ring 1 (green). All rings were obtained after 2000 integration steps.

5a.

5b.

Figure 5a. Direction of matter transferred from outer ring to inner ring. 5b: Nuclear ring 1 (green), nuclear ring 2 (yellow) and nuclear ring 3 (black). Chaotic orbits (magenta) connecting nuclear ring 1 and nuclear ring 2.

E. Galaxy Velocity Profiles

We analyzed the radial and tangential velocity profiles for a ring galaxy at each of the snap-shots. Figure 6a shows a larger conglomeration of stars can be seen at a radius of 0.1 from the center of the ring galaxy. The maximum radial velocity (Figure 6b) in this inner ring formed reaches a maximum value of 10 and the tangential velocity values (Figure 6c) range from 3 to 14. 7

6a. 6b. 6c Figure 6a. Ring Galaxy Formation with 3500 stars after 750 integration steps. 6b: Radial (black) velocity profile. 6c: Tangential (red) velocity profile.

7a. 7b. 7c Figure 7a. Ring Galaxy Formation with 3500 stars after 1000 integration steps. 7b: Radial (black) velocity profile. 7c: Tangential (red) velocity profile.

8a. 8b. 7c Figure 8a. Ring Galaxy Formation with 3500 stars after 1250 integration steps. 8b: Radial (black) velocity profile. 8c: Tangential (red) velocity profile.

9a. 9b. 9c Figure 9a. Ring Galaxy Formation with 3500 stars after 1500 integration steps. 9b: Radial (black) velocity profile. 9c: Tangential (red) velocity profile.

As the inner ring that is forming expands (Figure 7a), the radial velocities (Figure 7b) of the stars decrease reaching a maximum value of 7 and their tangential velocities values (Figure 7c) range from 3 to 15. After some time (Figure 8a) the stars form and outer ring. The radial velocities (Figure 8b) of this ring decreased down to values of about 4.5 while the tangential velocities values (Figure 8c) range from about 7.5 to 14. Finally, the last snap shot (Figure 9a) shows the recession of material from the outer ring towards the center of the ring galaxy. This pulsating process repeats itself and ring structures are newly formed.

V. Conclusion
In this paper we explored and examined the morphology and dynamics of barred and ring galaxies using a simple Direct N-Body Newtonian Model. In our simulations we showed that within these global structures we could find orbits where transport of material takes place. Even though this method is a simple approach it gives us very interesting features that could explain some of the unsolved problems in galactic dynamics and globular clusters via the invariant manifold theory. From a qualitative point of view we were able to have a better understanding on how some of these galaxy features, such as the formation of the spiral arms, the bar, and the rings. Moreover, we saw that there exist connections in the form of spurs and chaotic orbits as a way of material transport between the rings. These morphological patterns may provide a decent insight of various dynamical processes but in order to have a more realistic understanding of how these global structures behave we will have to use more powerful tools. Parallel computing will definitely be a big asset so we could perform heavier computational simulations. As in the Restricted Three Body Problem, the n-body problem is also chaotic with periodic and quasiperiodic orbits around the equilibrium points. In future studies, we will use dynamical systems theory to obtain the invariant manifolds that extend in the vicinity of these equilibrium points in such a way that they can generate the visible galactic structures transferring matter within the galaxy. This will yield a better determination of how stars move within the galaxy and the different processes that trigger star formation.

Acknowledgments
This project was performed at the Department of Astronautical Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Martin W. Lo and James K. Miller for their support and encouraging discussions. I also would like to acknowledge the University of Oklahoma at Norman and the University of Valencia in Spain where I took my first steps into Galactic Dynamics.

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