Numerical calculations of spiral shocks in the gas discs of galaxies (1,2,3) usually assume that the disc is flat, i.e. the gas motion is purely horizontal. However there is abundant evidence that the discs of galaxies are warped and corrugated (4,5,6) and it is therefore of interest to consider the effect of the consequent vertical motion on the structure of spiral shocks. If one uses the tightly wound spiral approximation to calculate the gas flow in a vertical cut around a circular orbit (i.e the ⊝ -z plane, see Nelson & Matsuda (7) for details), then for a gas disc with Gaussian density profile in the z-direction and initially zero vertical velocity a doubly periodic spiral potential modulation produces the steady shock structure shown in Fig. 1. The shock structure is independent of z, and only a very small vertical motion appears with anti-symmetry about the mid-plane.
Laser beam filamentation in a plasma with a steep density profile
