Related papers: The effect of radial migration on galactic disks
We use numerical simulations to examine the effects of radial migration on the vertical structure of galaxy disks. The simulations follow three exponential disks of different mass but similar circular velocity, radial scalelength, and…
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…
Non-axisymmetric components, such as spirals and central bars, play a major role in shaping galactic discs. An important aspect of the disc secular evolution driven by these perturbers is the radial migration of stars. It has been suggested…
Recent theoretical work suggests that it may be common for stars in the disks of spiral galaxies to migrate radially across significant distances in the disk. Such migrations are a result of resonant scattering with spiral arms and move the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
We use a suite of numerical simulations to investigate the mechanisms and effects of radial migration of stars in disk galaxies like the Milky Way (MW). An isolated, collisionless stellar disk with a MW-like scale-height shows only the…
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)…
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 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…
We present a study of the extent to which the Sellwood & Binney radial migration of stars is affected by their vertical motion about the midplane. We use both controlled simulations in which only a single spiral mode is excited, as well as…
The bulk of old stars in the Galactic disk have migrated radially by up to several kpc in their lifetimes, yet the disk has remained relatively cool, i.e., the ratio of radial heating to migration has been small. Here, we demonstrate that…
We show that in N-body simulations of isolated spiral discs, spiral arms appear to transient, recurring features that co-rotate with the stellar disc stars at all radii. As a consequence, stars around the spiral arm continually feel a…
Radial migration is defined as the change in guiding centre radius of stars and gas caused by gains or losses of angular momentum that result from gravitational interaction with non-axisymmetric structure. This has been shown to have…
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…
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…
Most stars in galactic disks are believed to be born as a member of star clusters or associations. Star clusters formed in disks are disrupted due to the tidal stripping and the evolution of star clusters themselves, and as a results new…
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…