Abstract
Nearly periodic substructure in the spiral arm is commonly found in the nearly grand-design spiral galaxies. Based on the theory of spiral density wave, Lee and Shu proposed a possible mechanism of generating these feather-like structures through the Feather Instability (FI) (Lee & Shu, ApJ 2012). Both self-gravity and magnetic field are found to be the important parameters governing the instability. In this talk, I will present some ongoing work to understand the nonlinear regime of FI by using numerical MHD simulations.
Coffee and tea will be served 20 minutes prior to the seminar.