Issue |
A&A
Volume 695, March 2025
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A193 | |
Number of page(s) | 23 | |
Section | Galactic structure, stellar clusters and populations | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202453611 | |
Published online | 19 March 2025 |
Signatures of simulated spiral arms on radial actions
1
Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange,
Bd de l’Observatoire, CS 34229,
06304
Nice cedex 4, France
2
Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, A28, The University of Sydney,
NSW
2006, Australia
3
Center of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in Three Dimensions (ASTRO-3D),
Australia
4
INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino,
via Osservatorio 20,
10025
Pino Torinese (TO), Italy
5
ILANCE, CNRS – University of Tokyo International Research Laboratory,
Kashiwa, Chiba
277-8582, Japan
6
Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, The University of Tokyo,
Kashiwa, Chiba
277-8583, Japan
7
Sorbonne Université, CNRS, UMR7095, Institute d’Astrophysique de Paris,
98 bis Boulevard Arago,
75014
Paris,
France
8
School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester,
University Road,
Leicester
LE1 7RH, UK
9
Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg,
UMR 7550,
67000
Strasbourg, France
★ Corresponding author; pedro.alonso-palicio@oca.eu
Received:
25
December
2024
Accepted:
17
February
2025
Context. Spiral arms play a key role in the evolution of disc galaxies, defining their morphology, star formation, chemistry, and dynamics. Among their various implications, it has been observed in the Milky Way disc that the distribution of Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3) radial actions exhibits structures that might be related to the spiral arms.
Aims. Our goal is to investigate the relationship between regions of low radial action identified in simulated discs and the location of the spiral arms, such as that suggested for the Galaxy in previous studies.
Methods. For a sample of 23 simulated spiral galaxies, we modelled the axisymmetric component of their gravitational potential to compute the radial action of their stellar particles using the Stäckel fudge. The spatial distribution of the radial action was then compared to the location of the spiral arms, identified as overdensities in the stellar surface density using a kernel density estimator.
Results. Our analysis reveals a strong correlation between the radial action distribution and the spiral arms in 18 of 23 simulated galaxies. However, notable discrepancies are observed in the remaining five, since they are profoundly out-of-equilibrium systems, such as galaxies influenced by external interactions or spiral arms still in the process of winding up. Additionally, spiral arms are consistently traced across young, intermediate, and old stellar populations (≥3 Gyr) in most simulations, suggesting that they are supported by stars spanning a broad age range.
Conclusions. We have confirmed that, in general, there is a tendency for spatial correlation between spiral arms and stellar populations featuring low values of the radial action, as discussed in the literature using Gaia DR3 data. However, discrepancies between features in the radial action distribution and the spiral structure can be interpreted as signatures of recent disturbances, a scenario applicable to the Milky Way. Furthermore, populations at least as old as 3 Gyr trace the spiral arms with no significant misalignment across age bins, suggesting a possible theoretical interpretation of the observations obtained with Gaia data. A linear relation between the maximum value of the radial action of the spiral arms and the vertical scale-length is found, which is also satisfied by the Milky Way.
Key words: Galaxy: disk / Galaxy: evolution / Galaxy: kinematics and dynamics / Galaxy: structure / galaxies: kinematics and dynamics
© The Authors 2025
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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