FORMATION OF INTERMEDIATE-SCALE STRUCTURES IN SPIRAL GALAXIES

Disk galaxies abound with intermediate-scale structures such as OB star complexes, giant clouds, and dust spurs in a close geometrical association with spiral arms. Various mechanisms have been proposed as candidates for their origin, but a comprehensive theory should encompass fundamental physical agents such as self-gravity, magnetic fields, galactic differential rotation, and spiral arms, all of which are known to exist in disk galaxies. Recent numerical simulations incorporating all these physical processes show that magneto-Jeans instability (MJI), in which magnetic tension resists the stabilizing Coriolis force of galaxy rotation, is much more powerful than swing-amplification or the Parker instability in forming self-gravitating intermediate-scale structures. The MJI occurring in shearing and expanding flows off spiral arms rapidly forms structures elongated along the direction perpendicular to the arms, remarkably similar to dust spurs seen in HST images of spiral galaxies. In highly nonlinear stages, these spurs fragment to form bound clumps, possibly evolving into bright arm and interarm H II regions, suggesting that all these intermediate-scale structures in spiral galaxies probably share a common dynamical origin.