The effects of turbulence on galactic nuclear gas rings

Kavli Affiliate: R. Morris

| First 5 Authors: Jesus M. Salas, Smadar Naoz, Mark R. Morris, ,

| Summary:

The gas dynamics in the inner few kiloparsecs of barred galaxies often
results in configurations that give rise to nuclear gas rings. However, the
generic dynamical description of the formation of galactic nuclear rings does
not take into account the effects of thermal pressure and turbulence. Here we
perform 3D hydrodynamic simulations of gas in a galactic barred potential out
to a radius of $2$~kpc. We include self-gravity and a large-scale
turbulence-driving module. We study how the formation of gaseous nuclear rings
is affected by changing the bar pattern speed and the strength of the
turbulence, and compare the results to simulations with a relatively high sound
speed. We use two values for the bar pattern speed that have been discussed in
the literature for our Milky Way Galaxy (40 and 63 km s$^{-1}$ kpc$^{-1}$). Our
results show that turbulence produces broader and smaller nuclear rings, and
enhances gas migration towards the inner few pc of the galaxy, compared to
simulations without turbulence.

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