Mahmood Roshan

Aims. The classical Jeans stability criterion neglects spatial gradients in background physical quantities such as density and pressure. Here, we revisit the Jeans analysis for a nonrotating fluid in hydrostatic equilibrium, explicitly accounting for these gradients and deriving a modified dispersion relation governing perturbation propagation. Methods. Using physical arguments, we show why the Jeans swindle is not required to derive the Jeans criterion for perturbations that are small compared to the size of the host system. We use linear perturbation analysis alongside an averaging procedure to study the behavior of the local Eulerian perturbations in a hydrostatic medium. We show that background gradients enter the dispersion relation in a highly nontrivial manner, precluding the derivation of a general gravitational stability criterion applicable to an arbitrary hydrostatic system. Results. We demonstrate that, in the local short-wavelength limit, the standard Jeans criterion remains valid despite the presence of nonzero background gradients. Furthermore, we show that all local perturbations in a hydrostatic system are stable against local gravitational collapse. Conclusions. We conclude that it is not possible to derive a general local gravitational stability criterion valid for an arbitrary hydrostatic background. However, in the local short-wavelength limit, the standard Jeans criterion remains valid.

This paper examines the reliability of the Tremaine-Weinberg (TW) method in measuring the pattern speed of barred galaxies at high redshifts. Measuring pattern speeds at high redshift may help to shed light on the time evolution of interactions between galactic bars and dark matter halos. The TW method has been extensively employed for nearby galaxies, and its accuracy in determining bar pattern speeds has been validated through numerical simulations. For nearby galaxies, the method yields acceptable results when the inclination angle of the galaxy and the position angle of the bar fall within appropriate ranges. However, the application of the TW method to high-redshift galaxies remains unexplored in both observations and simulations. For this study we generated mock observations of barred galaxies from the TNG50 cosmological simulation. These simulated observations were tailored to mimic the integral field unit (IFU) spectroscopy data that the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would capture at a redshift of ɀ ≃ 1.2. By applying the TW method to these mock observations and comparing the results with the known pattern speeds, we demonstrate that the TW method performs adequately for barred galaxies whose bars are sufficiently long to be detected by JWST at high redshifts. This work opens a new avenue for applying the TW method to investigate the properties of high-redshift barred galaxies.

The nature of dark matter remains one of the most pressing open questions in modern cosmology. Despite extensive experimental efforts, no direct or indirect detection of dark matter particles has been confirmed. This has motivated alternative approaches, including modifications to the underlying theory of gravity. In this work, we investigate the implications of a specific non-local gravity (NLG) theory, which modifies General Relativity by introducing non-local effects that manifest as an effective dark matter component. We analyze the velocity dispersion profiles of eight classical dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies - Carina, Draco, Fornax, Leo I, Leo II, Sculptor, Sextans, and Ursa Minor - to test the predictions of NLG. Using the Jeans equation, we model the kinematics of these galaxies and perform a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis to constrain the parameters of the NLG kernel chosen for our analysis. Our results indicate that NLG might successfully reproduce the observed kinematics of dSph galaxies without requiring particle dark matter, providing constraints on the scale-dependent modifications to gravity that are compatible with previous studies in the literature. However, a parameter inconsistency remains in the cases of Fornax and Sextans galaxies that requires further attention.

In this paper, we examine dynamical friction at galactic scales within the framework of coupled dark energy (CDE). This model posits dark energy as coupled quintessence, which maintains a minimal coupling to gravity but interacts nonminimally with both dark matter and baryonic matter. Since our focus is primarily on the Newtonian regime within galaxies, we begin by deriving the Newtonian limit of the model. Subsequently, we calculate the dynamical friction force using three different approaches. We demonstrate that, in the absence of interaction between dark energy and matter, standard quintessence does not generate any dynamical friction at the galactic scale. However, the presence of interaction does cause dynamical friction. By applying the resulting analytic expressions to a real self-gravitating system, namely the Fornax galaxy, and by implementing the constraints on the free parameter of the model obtained from galactic observations, we demonstrate that the CDE model leads to significant deviations from the standard cold dark matter model at galactic scales. On the other hand, if the cosmological constraints are assumed for the free parameter, the effects of the model are expected to be negligible at the galactic level, at least in dynamical friction.

In this paper, we examine dynamical friction at galactic scales within the framework of coupled dark energy. This model posits dark energy as coupled quintessence, which maintains a minimal coupling to gravity but interacts non-minimally with both dark matter and baryonic matter. Since our focus is primarily on the Newtonian regime within galaxies, we begin by deriving the Newtonian limit of the model. Subsequently, we calculate the dynamical friction force using three different approaches. We demonstrate that, in the absence of interaction between dark energy and matter, standard quintessence does not generate any dynamical friction at the galactic scale. However, the presence of interaction does cause dynamical friction. By applying the resulting analytic expressions to a real self-gravitating system, namely the Fornax galaxy, and by implementing the constraints on the free parameter of the model obtained from galactic observations, we demonstrate that the coupled dark energy model leads to significant deviations from the standard cold dark matter model at galactic scales. On the other hand, if the cosmological constraints are assumed for the free parameter, the effects of the model are expected to be negligible at the galactic level, at least in dynamical friction.

In this paper, the redshift evolution of the galactic bar properties, like the bar length, pattern speed, and bar fraction, has been investigated for simulated galaxies at stellar masses of M_* > 10¹⁰ M_⊙ in the cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulation TNG50. We focus on the redshift evolution of the bar pattern speeds and the fast bar tension. We show that the median value of the pattern speed of the bars increases as the redshift grows. On the other hand, although the median value of the bar length increases with time, the ratio between the corotation radius and the bar radius - namely, the 𝓡 = R_CR/R_bar parameter - increases as well. In other words, the corotation radius increases with a higher rate than the bar length. This directly means that galactic bars slow down with time, or equivalently as the redshift declines. We discuss the possible mechanisms that reduce the pattern speeds in TNG50. We demonstrate that while mergers can have a significant impact on a galaxy’s pattern speed, they do not play a crucial role in the overall evolution of mean pattern speed within the redshift range ɀ ≤ 1.0. Furthermore, we show that the 𝓡 parameter does not correlate with the gas fraction. Consequently, the existence of gas in TNG50 does not alleviate the fast bar tension. We show that the mean value of the pattern speed, computed for all the galaxies irrespective of their mass, at ɀ = 1.0 is Ω_p = 70.98 ± 2.34 km s⁻¹ kpc⁻¹ and reduces to Ω_p = 33.65 ± 1.07 km s⁻¹ kpc⁻¹ at ɀ = 0.0. This is a direct prediction by TNG50 that bars at ɀ = 1.0 rotate faster by a factor of ~2 compared to bars at ɀ = 0.0.