English

Efficient radial migration by giant molecular clouds in the first several hundred Myr after the stellar birth

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2023-06-07 v2 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

Stars in the Galactic disc, including the Solar system, have deviated from their birth orbits and have experienced radial mixing and vertical heating. By performing hydrodynamical simulations of a galactic disc, we investigate how much tracer particles, which are initially located in the disc to mimic newborn stars and the thin and thick disc stars, are displaced from initial near-circular orbits by gravitational interactions with giant molecular clouds (GMCs). To exclude the influence of other perturbers that can change the stellar orbits, such as spiral arms and the bar, we use an axisymmetric form for the entire galactic potential. First, we investigate the time evolution of the radial and vertical velocity dispersion σR\sigma_R and σz\sigma_z by comparing them with a power law relation of σtβ\sigma \propto t^{\beta}. Although the exponents β\beta decrease with time, they keep large values of 0.3 \sim 0.6 for 1 Gyr, indicating fast and efficient disc heating. Next, we find that the efficient stellar scattering by GMCs also causes a change in angular momentum for each star and, therefore, radial migration. This effect is more pronounced in newborn stars than old disc stars; nearly 30 per cent of stars initially located on the galactic mid-plane move more than 1 kpc in the radial direction for 1 Gyr. The dynamical heating and radial migration drastically occur in the first several hundred Myr. As the amplitude of the vertical oscillation increases, the time spent in the galactic plane, where most GMCs are distributed, decreases, and the rate of an increase in the heating and migration slows down.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.07050,
  title  = {Efficient radial migration by giant molecular clouds in the first several hundred Myr after the stellar birth},
  author = {Yusuke Fujimoto and Shu-ichiro Inutsuka and Junichi Baba},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.07050},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

16 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. The simulation movie can be found at https://youtu.be/Rw4EZEOtOk4