Orbital dynamics in realistic galaxy models: NGC 3726, NGC 3877 and NGC 4010

Abstract

In the present paper, using a generalization of the Miyamoto and Nagai potential we adjusted the observed rotation curves of three specific spiral galaxies to the analytical circular velocities. The observational data have been taken from a 21 cm-line synthesis imaging survey using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, for three particular galaxies in the Ursa Major cluster: NGC 3726, NGC 3877 and NGC 4010. Accordingly, the dynamics of the system is analyzed in terms of the Poincar\'e sections method, finding that for larger values of the angular momentum of the test particle or lower values its total energy the dynamics is mainly regular, while on the opposite cases, the dynamics is mainly chaotic. Our toy model opens the possibility to find chaotic bounded orbits for stars in those particular galaxies.