2001/05/16 by V. Jacobs, J. A. Sellwood · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/321728
published as Astrophys.J. 555 (2001) L25-L28 · 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in ApJ Letters, LaTeX (uses emulateapj.sty)
arxiv created 2001/05/16 · openalex publication_date 2001/07/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We demonstrate the existence of long-lived, large-amplitude eccentric modes in massive, annular particle disks in orbit about a central mass. The lopsided modes we have found precess slowly in the prograde direction at a rate that increases with disk mass and decreases with the amplitude of the distortion. The lopsidedness generally survives for as long as we run the calculations and may last indefinitely; we found no significant decay in over 700 disk-particle orbits in one case. These strongly nonlinear modes are readily created using a number of different perturbing rules, but we find no evidence for linear instabilities in unperturbed disks. Our results suggest that Tremaine's eccentric disk model for the nucleus of M31 may be viable, but none of our models matches all aspects of the observational data.