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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1971 Sep;68(9):2095–2098. doi: 10.1073/pnas.68.9.2095

The Spiral Wave of Our Galaxy Near Inner Lindblad Resonance

James W-K Mark 1
PMCID: PMC389359  PMID: 16591941

Abstract

The dispersion relationship for short-wavelength spiral density waves in our Galaxy has been refined to remove the divergences that occurred in wave number and in amplitude as inner Lindblad resonance is approached. The wave is found to be evanescent in an annular region near 4 kpc. By 3 kpc, the inward propagating trailing wave is completely absorbed. The outgoing leading wave is suppressed compared to the trailing one because it begins in the evanescent state. Throughout this region of inner Lindblad resonance, a smooth wave amplitude has been obtained, and it has a sharp peak correlating well with the observed density of ionized hydrogen.

Keywords: ionized hydrogen, density wave, leading and trailing spirals

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Lin C. C., Shu F. H. On the spiral structure of disk galaxies, ii. Outline of a theory of density waves. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1966 Feb;55(2):229–234. doi: 10.1073/pnas.55.2.229. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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