Gas flow in barred potentials

Abstract

We use a Cartesian grid to simulate the flow of gas in a barred Galactic potential and investigate the effects of varying the sound speed in the gas and the resolution of the grid. For all sound speeds and resolutions, streamlines closely follow closed orbits at large and small radii. At intermediate radii shocks arise and the streamlines shift between two families of closed orbits. The point at which the shocks appear and the streamlines shift between orbit families depends strongly on sound speed and resolution. For sufficiently large values of these two parameters, the transfer happens at the cusped orbit as hypothesized by Binney et al. over two decades ago. For sufficiently high resolutions, the flow downstream of the shocks becomes unsteady. If this unsteadiness is physical, as appears to be the case, it provides a promising explanation for the asymmetry in the observed distribution of CO.