Global Spiral Density Wave Modes in Protoplanetary Disks: Morphology of Spiral Arms

Abstract We analyze two-armed global spiral density wave modes generated by gravitational instability in razor-thin, nonviscous, self-gravitating protoplanetary disks to understand the dependence of spiral arm morphology (pitch angle α and amplitude) on various disk conditions. The morphologies of the resulting spiral density wave modes closely resemble observations. Their pitch angles and pattern speeds are insensitive to the boundary conditions adopted. Gaussian disks exhibit more tightly wound spirals (smaller pitch angle) than power-law disks under the same conditions. We find that at a fixed disk-to-star mass ratio (M d /M *), the pitch angle increases with average Toomre’s stability parameter ( ) or average disk aspect ratio ( ). For a given , density wave modes with higher M d /M * have larger pitch angles, while the behavior reverses for a given . The interdependence between pitch angle and disk properties can be roughly approximated by , where c s is the sound speed. Our gravitational instability-excited spiral density waves can be distinguished from planet-launched spirals: (1) massive cool disks have spiral pitch angle falling with radius, while low-mass hot disks have spiral pitch angle rising with radius; (2) the profile of spiral amplitude presents several dips and bumps. We propose that gravitational instability-excited density waves can serve as an alternative scenario to explain the observed spiral arms in self-gravitating protoplanetary disks.