High-Resolution Simulations of the Nuclear Star-Forming Ring

  • Published : 2013.04.11

Abstract

We have performed a set of high-resolution simulations of nuclear star-forming ring that results in an inward gas migration from the galactic disk. Our simulations consider gas heating/cooling, star formation, and supernova feedback. The galactic potential was obtained from a snapshot of a 6.3 million particle simulation of a galactic disk at 1 Gyr, which manifests spiral arms and pseudo-bulge. The potential was modeled with a combination of 3-dimensional spherical (for the pseudo-bulge) and 2-dimensional cylindrical (for the disk) multipole expansion technique. With such a potential model, one can easily set up various realistic 3-dimensional potential models by slightly changing the expansion coefficients. We have performed a set of simulations with a few million gas particles covering the central ~6 kpc of the disk for different pseudo-bulge sizes and non-axisymmetry, and we report the dependence of the gas inflow rate, size of the star-forming ring, and star-formation rate in the ring on the size and strength of the non-axisymmetry in the bulge.

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