The structure of spiral galaxies - II. Near-infrared properties of spiral arms

Different spiral generation mechanisms are expected to produce different morphological and kinematic features. In this first paper in a series we carefully study the parameters of spiral structure in 155 face-on spiral galaxies, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, in the three $gri$ bands. We use a method for deriving a set of parameters of spiral structure, such as the width of the spiral arms, their fraction to the total galaxy luminosity and their colour, which hav...

The density-wave theory of spiral structure proposes that star formation occurs in or near a spiral-shaped region of higher density that rotates rigidly within the galactic disk at a fixed pattern speed. In most interpretations of this theory, newborn stars move downstream of this position as they come into view, forming a downstream spiral which is tighter, with a smaller pitch angle than that of the density wave itself. Rival theories, including theories which see spiral ar...

Spiral galaxies are common in the local Universe, but their formation, evolution, and interplay with bars remain poorly understood. We use a sample of 391 nearby galaxies from the S$^4$G survey to characterise the winding angle and amplitude of spiral arms as a function of disc properties, such as bar strength, in all kinds of spirals (grand-design, multi-armed, and flocculent). We derive global pitch angles in 3.6 $\mu$m de-projected images from i) average measurements of in...

Large-scale galactic shocks, predicted by density wave theory, trigger star formation (SF-arms) downstream from the potential of the oldest stars (P-arms), resulting in a color jump from red to blue across spiral arms in the direction of rotation, while aging of these newly formed young stars induces the opposite but coexisting classic age gradient further downstream from the SF-arms. As the techniques for measuring pitch angle are intensity-weighted, they trace both the SF-a...

(abridged): To derive a coherent physical framework for the excitation of spiral structure in galaxies, one must consider the co-existence of two different dynamical components: a gas-dominated Population I disk (OB associations, HII regions, cold interstellar HI gas) and an evolved stellar Population II component. The Hubble classification scheme has as its focus, the morphology of the Population I component only. In the near-infrared, the morphology of evolved stellar disks...

This paper presents some new statistical correlations between the properties of disks and spiral arms with some physical properties of galaxies. Our results show that the thickness of spiral disks tend to diminish along the Hubble sequence in the sense that disks of Sc galaxies are 40% thinner than disks of Sab-Sb galaxies. Moreover, the thinner disks tend also to be bluer. We also find that there exists a correlation between HI linewidths and arm pattern within each Hubble t...

We present a detailed photometric study and measurements of spiral arm pitch angles for a sample of 50 non-barred or weakly barred grand-design spiral galaxies selected from Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In order to find pitch angles, we used a new method based on the window Fourier analysis of their images. This method allows us not only to infer the average pitch angle, but to obtain its value as a function of galactocentric radius as well. Our main results are as follows: (1...

We present K'(2.1 micron) observations of four nearby flocculent spirals, which clearly show low-level spiral structure and suggest that kiloparsec-scale spiral structure is more prevalent in flocculent spirals than previously supposed. In particular, the prototypical flocculent spiral NGC 5055 is shown to have regular, two-arm spiral structure to a radius of 4 kpc in the near infrared, with an arm-interarm contrast of 1.3. The spiral structure in all four galaxies is weaker ...

We present deep near-infrared K_s-band AAT IRIS2 observations of a selected sample of nearby barred spiral galaxies, including some with the strongest known bars. The sample covers a range of Hubble types from SB0- to SBc. The goal is to determine if the torque strengths of the spirals correlate with those of the bars, which might be expected if the bars actually drive the spirals as has been predicted by theoretical studies. This issue has implications for interpreting bar a...

Spiral structure can occupy a significant part of the galaxy, but properly accounting for it in photometric decomposition is rarely done. This may lead to significant errors in the parameters determined. To estimate how exactly neglecting the presence of spiral arms affects the estimation of galaxy decomposition parameters, we perform fitting of 29 galaxies considering spiral arms as a separate component. In this study, we utilize 3.6$\mu$m-band images from the S$^4$G survey ...