Transient spiral structure and the disc velocity substructure in Gaia DR2
Open accessAbstract
The second data release from ESA’s Gaia mission has revealed many ridge-like structures in the velocity distribution of the Milky Way. We show that these can arise naturally from winding transient spiral structure that is commonly seen in N-body simulations of disc galaxies. We construct test particle models of the winding spiral structure, and compare the resulting distribution of orbits with the observed two-dimensional velocity distribution in the extended solar neighbourhood and with the distribution of rotational velocities over 8 kpc along the Sun–Galactic-centre–Galactic anticentre line. We show that the ridges in these observations are well reproduced by the winding spiral model. Additionally, we demonstrate that the transient winding spiral potential can create a Hercules-like feature in the kinematics of the solar neighbourhood, either alone, or in combination with a long-slow bar potential.
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- Authors
- Hunt, J. A. S., Hong, J., Bovy, J., Kawata, D., & Grand, R. J. J.
- Affiliations
- Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3H4, Canada
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- University College London (GB)
- Heidelberg University (DE)
- Venue
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2018-09-14
- Volume
- 481
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 3794-3803
- ISSN
- 0035-8711 (ISSN-L)
- 1365-2966
- OpenAlex
- W2806837809
- Cited by
- 108
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 7.13
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (publishedVersion)
- Liverpool John Moores University (acceptedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2015-05235)
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/N000811/1)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations
- Keywords
- Galactic disk, rotational speed, test particle model, Gaia DR2
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