Non-linear spiral waves in accretion discs

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• Joshua Brown (DAMTP Cambridge)
• Thursday 04 December 2025, 12:30-13:30
• Institute of Astronomy .

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Mika Kontiainen.

Spiral density waves occur across the spectrum of astrophysical discs, and have been studied from many different perspectives over the last 70 years. They’re excited by anything and everything: internal and external companions or perturbers, instabilities, vortices, disc-self-shadowing, etc., and can play important roles in the formation of gaps and rings, planet migration, accretion, and turbulence regulation and feedback.

I’ll introduce a couple of perspectives which have been particularly insightful historically, before outlining a global fully non-linear theory of these waves which Gordon Ogilvie and I developed recently, including how and when to use it, how it relates to prior work, and some immediate insights gained. I’ll focus on the problem of planet-disc interaction, comparing the theory to simulations of low-mass and very high-mass disc-embedded planets.

This talk is part of the IoA Dynamics Lunch series.

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• Institute of Astronomy
• IoA Dynamics Lunch

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