Mon.Not.R.Astron.Soc.000,1–1.PDFVIP

A Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 000, 1–15 (2006) Printed 26 October 2015 (MN LT X style file v2.2) E Galactic warps induced by cosmic infall Juntai Shen⋆ and J. A. Sellwood† Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, 136 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA Accepted 26 October 2015 6 0 ABSTRACT 0 Recent ideas for the origin and persistence of the warps commonly observed in disc galaxies 2 have focused on cosmic infall. We present N -body simulations of an idealized form of cosmic infall onto a disc galaxy and obtain a warp that closely resembles those observed. The inner r p disc tilts remarkably rigidly, indicating strong cohesion due to self-gravity. The line of nodes A of the warp inside R26.5 ∼ 4.5Rd is straight, while that beyond R26.5 generally forms a loosely-wound, leading spiral in agreement with Briggs’s rules. We focus on the mechanism 5 of the warp and show that the leading spiral arises from the torques from the misaligned 2 inner disc and its associated inner oblate halo. The fact that the line of nodes of most warps forms a leading spiral might imply that the disc mass is significant in the centre. If the line 1 of nodes can be traced to very large radii in future observations, it may reveal information on