The effect of spiral structure on the measurements of the Oort constants

Abstract

We perform test-particle simulations in a 2D, differentially rotating stellar disc, subjected to a two-armed steady state spiral density wave perturbation in order to estimate the influence of spiral structure on the local velocity field. By using Levenberg-Marquardt least-squares fit we decompose the local velocity field (as a result of our simulations) into Fourier components to fourth order. Thus we obtain simulated measurements of the Oort constants, A, B, C and K. We get relations between the Fourier coefficients and some galactic parameters, such as the phase angle of the solar neighbourhood and the spiral pattern speed. We show that systematic errors due to the presence of spiral structure are likely to affect the measurements of the Oort constants (OC). Moderate strength spiral structure causes errors of order 5 km s-1 kpc-1 in A and B. We find variations of the Fourier coefficients with velocity dispersion, pattern speed and sample depth. For a sample at an average heliocentric distance of 0.8 kpc we can summarize our findings as follows: (i) if our location in the Galaxy is near corotation then we expect a vanishing value for C for all phase angles; (ii) for a hot disc, spiral structure induced errors for all OC vanish at, and just inward of the corotation radius; (iii) as one approaches the 4:1 Lindblad resonances increases and so does its variation with galactic azimuth; (iv) for all simulations, on average, is larger for lower stellar velocity dispersions, contrary to recent measurements. © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 RAS.