Instabilities of Spiral Shocks -- II. A quasi-steady State in the multi-phase inhomogeneous ISM

Abstract

The ``galactic shocks'' \citep{fujimoto68,roberts69} is investigated using a full three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations, taking into account self-gravity of the ISM, radiative cooling, and star formation followed by energy feedback from supernovae. This is an essential progress from the previous numerical models, in which 2-D isothermal, non-self-gravitating gas is assumed. We find that the classic galactic shocks appears is unstable and transient, and it shifts to a globally quasi-steady, inhomogeneous pattern due to non-linear development of instabilities in the disk. The spiral patterns consists of many GMC-like dense condensations, but those local structures are not steady, and they evolves into irregular spurs in the inter-arm regions. Energy feedback from supernovae do not destroy the quasi-steady spiral arms, but it mainly contributes to vertical motion and structures of the ISM.