Related papers: Implications of Radial Migration for Stellar Popul…
Near the corotation resonance of a transient spiral arm, stellar orbital angular momenta may be changed without inducing significant kinematic heating, resulting in what has come to be known as radial migration. When radial migration is…
Recent studies of Galactic evolution revealed that the dynamics of the stellar component might be one of the key factors when considering galactic habitability. We run an N-body simulation model of the Milky Way, which we evolve for 10 Gyr,…
The orbital angular momentum of individual stars in galactic discs can be permanently changed through torques from transient spiral patterns. Interactions at the corotation resonance dominate these changes and have the further property of…
We study the role of radial migration of stars on the chemical evolution of the Milky Way disk. In particular, we are interested in the impact of that process on the local properties of the disk (age-metallicity relation and its dispersion,…
Radial migration and dynamical heating redistribute stars within galactic discs and thereby modify the chemo-kinematic structure of their host galaxies. Usually, these secular processes are studied in N-body and hydrodynamical simulations…
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…
Knowledge of the spatially resolved star formation history (SFH) of disk galaxies provides crucial insight into disk assembly, quenching, and chemical evolution. However, most reconstructions, both for the Milky Way and for external…
We study how migration affects stars of a galaxy with a thin stellar disc and thicker stellar components. The simulated galaxy has a strong bar and lasting spiral arms. We find that the amplitude of the churning (change in angular momentum)…
Stars born on near-circular orbits in spiral galaxies can subsequently migrate to different orbits due to interactions with non-axisymmetric disturbances within the disc such as bars or spiral arms. This paper extends the study of migration…
Effective radial migration and mixing of orbits throughout the stellar disk has been definitively established in the Milky Way, but not in any other galaxy. We show how such radial mixing can be measured (or strongly constrained) in M31…
Transient spiral waves of moderate amplitude cause substantial changes to the angular momenta of many stars in a galaxy disk. Stars near to corotation are affected most strongly: for a wave of ~20% overdensity, the rms change for particles…
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…
It is widely accepted that stars in a spiral disk, like the Milky Way's, can radially migrate on order a scale length over the disk's lifetime. With the exception of cold torquing, also known as "churning," processes that contribute to the…
We present evidence that isolated growing discs, subject to internal spiral perturbations, thicken due to both heating \emph{and} radial migration. We show this by demonstrating that the thickness and vertical velocity dispersions of coeval…
Recent numerical N-body simulations of spiral galaxies have shown that spiral arms in N-body simulations seem to rotate at a similar speed to the local rotation speed of the stellar disc material. This in turn yields winding, transient and…
In the last years, stellar migration in galactic discs has been the subject of several investigations. However, its impact on the chemical evolution of the Milky Way still needs to be fully quantified. In this paper, we aim at imposing some…
We have recently identified a previously unknown radial migration mechanism resulting from the overlap of spiral and bar resonances in galactic discs (Minchev & Famaey 2010, Minchev et al. 2010). This new mechanism is much more efficient…
By means of N-body simulations, we show that radial migration in galaxy disks, induced by bar and spiral arms, leads to significant azimuthal variations in the metallicity distribution of old stars at a given distance from the galaxy…
Radial stellar migration in galactic discs has received much attention in studies of galactic dynamics and chemical evolution, but remains a dynamical phenomenon that needs to be fully quantified. In this work, using a Tree-SPH simulation…
We investigate the evolution of galactic disks in N-body Tree-SPH simulations. We find that disks, initially truncated at three scale-lengths, can triple their radial extent, solely driven by secular evolution. Both Type I (single…