Papers › The evolution of pitch angles of spiral arms
The evolution of pitch angles of spiral arms
J. E. Pringle, C. L. Dobbs
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In spiral galaxies, the pitch angle, α, of the spiral arms is often proposed as a discriminator between theories for the formation of the spiral structure. In Lin-Shu density wave theory, α stays constant in time, being simply a property of the underlying galaxy. In other theories (e.g tidal interaction, self-gravity) it is expected that the arms wind up in time, so that to a first approximation cotα∝t. For these theories, it would be expected that a sample of galaxies observed at random times should show a uniform distribution of cotα. We show that a recent set of measurements of spiral pitch angles (Yu & Ho 2018) is broadly consistent with this expectation.
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