The Galactic Branches as a Possible Evidence for Transient Spiral Arms
  With the use of a background Milky-Way-like potential model, we performed
stellar orbital and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. As a first
experiment, we studied the gaseous response to a bisymmetric spiral arm
potential: the widely employed cosine potential model and a self-gravitating
tridimensional density distribution based model called PERLAS. Important
differences are noticeable in these simulations, while the simplified cosine
potential produces two spiral arms for all cases, the more realistic density
based model produces a response of four spiral arms on the gaseous disk, except
for weak arms -i.e. close to the linear regime- where a two-armed structure is
formed. In order to compare the stellar and gas response to the spiral arms, we
have also included a detailed periodic orbit study and explored different
structural parameters within observational uncertainties. The four armed
response has been explained as the result of ultra harmonic resonances, or as
shocks with the massive bisymmetric spiral structure, among other. From the
results of this work, and comparing the stellar and gaseous responses, we
tracked down an alternative explanation to the formation of branches, based
only on the orbital response to a self-gravitating spiral arms model. The
presence of features such as branches, might be an indication of transiency of
the arms.
