Signatures of vertical disequilibrium have been observed across the Milky Way’s (MW’s) disk. These signatures manifest locally as unmixed phase spirals in
Galactic disks are highly responsive systems that often undergo external perturbations and subsequent collisionless equilibration, predominantly via phase mixing. We use linear perturbation theory to study the response of infinite isothermal slab analogs of disks to perturbations with diverse spatiotemporal characteristics. Without self-gravity of the response, the dominant Fourier modes that get excited in a disk are the bending and breathing modes, which, due to vertical phase mixing, trigger local phase-space spirals that are one- and two-armed, respectively. We demonstrate how the lateral streaming motion of slab stars causes phase spirals to damp out over time. The ratio of the perturbation timescale (
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10370067
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Volume:
- 935
- Issue:
- 2
- Page Range or eLocation-ID:
- Article No. 135
- ISSN:
- 0004-637X
- Publisher:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.3847
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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