Related papers: Dynamical Evolution of Disk Galaxies
We seek to understand the origin of radial migration in spiral galaxies by analyzing in detail the structure and evolution of an idealized, isolated galactic disk. To understand the redistribution of stars, we characterize the…
Disk galaxies evolve over time through processes that may rearrange both the radial mass profile and the metallicity distribution within the disk. This review of such slow changes is largely, though not entirely, restricted to…
Spirals in galaxies have long been thought to be caused by gravitational instability in the stellar component of the disk, but discerning the precise mechanism had proved elusive. Tidal interactions, and perhaps bars, may provoke some…
The rate of internally-driven evolution of galaxy discs is strongly affected by the lifetimes of the spiral patterns they support. Evolution is much faster if the spiral patterns are recurrent short-lived transients rather than long-lived,…
Bars in spiral galaxies can weaken through gas inflow towards the center, and angular momentum transfer. Several bar episodes can follow one another in the life of the galaxy, if sufficient gas is accreted from the intergalactic medium to…
The evolution of galaxies is driven strongly by dynamical processes including internal instabilities, tidal interactions and mergers. The cluster environment is a useful laboratory for studying these effects. I present recent results on…
In this review, I discuss just three aspects of the stability and evolution of galactic discs. (1) I first review our understanding of the bar instability and how it can be controlled. Disc galaxies in which the orbital speed does not…
In the solar-neighbourhood, older stars have larger random velocities than younger ones. It is argued that the increase in velocity dispersion with time is predominantly a gradual process rather than one induced by discrete events such as…
We present evidence that recurrent spiral activity, long manifested in simulations of disk galaxies, results from the super-position of a few transient spiral modes. Each mode lasts between 5 and 10 rotations at its corotation radius where…
We show that spiral waves in galaxy discs churn the stars and gas in a manner that largely preserves the overall angular momentum distribution and leads to little increase in random motion. Changes in the angular momenta of individual stars…
Spiral galaxies offer a unique opportunity to study the role of star formation in galaxy evolution and to test various theoretical star formation schemes. I review some recent relevant work on the evolution of spiral galaxies. Detailed…
The redistribution of stars in galactic disks is an important aspect of disk galaxy evolution. Stars that efficiently migrate in such a way that does not also appreciably heat their orbits can drastically affect the stellar populations…
The Galactic disk retains a vast amount of information about how it came to be, and how it evolved over cosmic time. However, we know very little about the secular processes associated with disk evolution. One major uncertainty is the…
Scattering of stars by interstellar clouds or massive clumps increases the stellar velocity dispersion and promotes a radial disk profile that is exponential. Here we show that such scattering reaches a steady-state distribution function of…
Stars in disks of spiral galaxies are usually assumed to remain roughly at their birth radii. This assumption is built into decades of modelling of the evolution of stellar populations in our own Galaxy and in external systems. We present…
Galaxy disks evolve through angular momentum transfers between sub-components, like gas, stars, or dark matter halos, through non axi-symmetric instabilities. The speed of this evolution is boosted in presence of a large fraction of cold…
Observations reveal that mature spiral galaxies consist of stars, gases and plasma approximately distributed in a thin disk of circular shape, usually with a central bulge. The rotation velocities quickly increase from the galactic center…
Non-axisymmetric modes like spirals and bars are the main driver of the evolution of disks, in transferring angular momentum, and allowing mass accretion. This evolution proceeds through self-regulation and feedback mechanisms, such as bar…
We argue that self-excited instabilities are the cause of spiral patterns in simulations of unperturbed stellar discs. In previous papers, we have found that spiral patterns were caused by a few concurrent waves, which we claimed were…
Interstellar turbulence is driven over a wide range of scales by processes including spiral arm instabilities and supernovae, and it affects the rate and morphology of star formation, energy dissipation, and angular momentum transfer in…