Star Formation Epidemics in Spiral Galaxies

Star Formation Epidemics in Galaxies
Asa J. Stewart 3rd Year Physics and Astronomy project report in the school of physics, Cardi University Date of submission: 16th May 2011
Supervisor: Prof. Anthony Whitworth

Contents
0.1 Aims and objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.2 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.2.1 Observed properties of disk galaxies . . . . . . . . . . 0.2.2 Star formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.2.3 Lindblad Resonance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.3 Model Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.3.1 Galactic Potential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.3.2 Cloud Ensemble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.3.3 Cloud/Cloud Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.4 Numerical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.4.1 Galactic Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.4.2 Monte Carlo Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.4.3 Runge Kutta Integration Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.4.4 Collisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.4.5 Cluster Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.4.6 Lindblad Resonance for Satellites Orbiting the Galaxy 0.4.7 Fourier Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.4.8 Inter-cloud Gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.5 Results & Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.5.1 Lindblad Resonance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.5.2 Fourier Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.5.3 In-falling Clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.5.4 Inter-cloud gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.5.5 Kennicutt-Schmidt law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.5.6 Galaxy Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.7 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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