Highlights on Spanish Astrophysics IX, Proceedings of the XII Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society held on July 18 – 22, 2016, in Bilbao, Spain. S. Arribas, A. Alonso-Herrero, F.
Figueras, C. Hernández-Monteagudo, A. Sánchez-Lavega, S. Pérez-Hoyos (eds.)
Connecting interacting galaxies with manifolds
M. Romero-Gomez
1, and E. Athanassoula
21
Institut de Ci` encies del Cosmos (ICC), Universitat de Barcelona (IE EC-UB), Mart´ı i Franqu` es 1, E08028 Barcelona, Spain
2
Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), UMR6110, CNRS/Universit´ e de Provence, Technopˆ ole de Marseille Etoile, 38 rue Fr´ ed´ eric Joliot Curie, 13388 Marseille C´ edex 13, France
Abstract
It is well known that two interacting galaxies generate tidal spiral arms. In this talk, we address the question of the formation of the tidal arms from a dynamical point of view. We model the two interacting galaxies as two point masses and we study the motion of the stars using the Restricted Three Body Problem, i.e. the two mass points are bound and circle around their center of mass. Even though it may seem a simple approximation, it has been shown in the literature to give an adequate description of the formation and early evolution of bridges and tails in interacting galaxies. We model the bridges and tails observed in interacting galaxies using the invariant manifolds associated to the Lyapunov orbits of the Lagrangian points of the galactic system.
