The formation of ring galaxies

The conditions under which a head-on collision between a disk galaxy and a spherical galaxy can lead to ring formation are investigated, using the impulsive approximation. The spherical galaxy is modeled as a polytrope of indexn=4 and radiusR _S and the disk galaxy as an exponential disk whose surface density is given by \(\sigma (r) = \sigma _c e^{ - 4r/R_D } \) , where σ _c is the central density andR _D is the radius of the disk. The formation and properties of the rings are closely related to the fractional change in binding energy of the disk galaxy, given by ΔU/?U?=γ _D β _D , where (GM _S ² R _D )/(V ² M _D R _S ² ),M _S andM _D being the masses of the spherical and disk galaxies, respectively, and β _D ≡β _D (n, σ, ?,i) is a function of the models of the two galaxies, the ratio of the radii of the two galaxies ?=R _S /R _D , and the angle of inclinationi, of the disk to the direction of relative motion of the two galaxies. Calculations are made for the caseR _S =R _D . Since practically the entire mass of the spherical galaxy, for the chosen model, lies within 1/3 of its radius, the radius of the spherical galaxy is effectively \(\tfrac{1}{3}\) that of the disk galaxy. It is found that as a result of the collision, the innermost and the outer parts of the disk galaxy are not much affected, but the intermediate region expands and gets evacuated, leading to the crowding of stars in a preferential region forming a ring structure. The rings are best formed for a normal, on-axis collision. For this case, rings form when ΔU/|U| lies between \(\tfrac{1}{2}\) and 2, while they are very sharp and bright when ΔU/|U| lies between \(\tfrac{1}{2}\) and 1. Within this range, as ΔU/|U| increases, the rings become sharper and their positions shift outwards with respect to the centre of the disk galaxy. The relationship $$\gamma _D = 0.0016 + 0.045s_{{\text{max}}}^2 ,$$ wheres _max is the radial distance of the density maximum of the ring from the centre of the disk galaxy (measured in terms of the radius of the disk galaxy as unit) enables us to finds _max from γ _D and vice versa, and interpret some prominent ring galaxies. The effect of introducing a bulge to the disk is to distribute the tidal disruptive effects more evenly and, hence, reduce the sharpness of the ring.