Effect of dark matter halo on global spiral modes in a collisionless galactic disc

Soumavo Ghosh, Tarun Deep Saini, Chanda J Jog

Published 2016-06-28Version 1

Low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies are dominated by dark matter halo from the innermost radii; hence they are ideal candidates to investigate the influence of dark matter on different dynamical aspects of spiral galaxies. Here, we study the effect of dark matter halo on grand-design, m = 2, spiral modes in a galactic disc, treated as a collisionless system, by carrying out a global modal analysis within the WKB approximation. First, we study a superthin, LSB galaxy UGC 7321 and show that it does not support discrete global spiral modes when modelled as a disc-alone system or as a disc plus dark matter system. Even a moderate increase in the stellar central surface density does not yield any global spiral modes. This naturally explains the observed lack of large-scale spiral structure in LSBs. An earlier work (Ghosh, Saini, & Jog 2016) where the galactic disc was treated as a fluid system for simplicity had shown that the dominant halo could not arrest global modes. This difference arises due to the different dispersion relation used in the two cases and which plays a crucial role in the search for global spiral modes. Thus the correct treatment of stars as a collisionless system as done here results in the non-existence of global spiral modes, in agreement with the observations. We performed a similar modal analysis for the Galaxy, and found that the dark matter halo has a negligible effect on large-scale spiral structure.