Interaction between collisionless galactic discs and non-axisymmetric dark matter haloes.

Using N-body simulations (N ∼ 106–107), we examine how a non-axisymmetric dark halo affects the dynamical evolution of the structure in collisionless (stellar) discs. We demonstrate how the model parameters such as mass of the halo, initial conditions in the disc and the halo axis ratio affect morphology and kinematics of the stellar discs. We show that a non-axisymmetric halo can generate a large-scale spiral density pattern in the embedded stellar disc. The pattern is observed in the disc for many periods of its revolution, even if the disc is gravitationally overstable. The growth of the spiral arms is not accompanied by significant dynamical heating of the disc, irrelevant to its initial parameters. We also investigate transformation of the dark halo’s shape driven by the long-lived spiral pattern in the disc. We show that the analysis of the velocity field in the stellar disc and in the spiral pattern gives us a possibility to figure out the spatial orientation of the triaxial dark halo and to measure the triaxiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]