Related papers: Dynamics of Stellar Disk Tilting from Satellite Me…
Stellar streams are sensitive tracers of the gravitational potential, which is typically assumed to be static in the inner Galaxy. However, massive mergers like Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus can impart torques on the stellar disk of the Milky Way…
Previous studies have shown that disk warps can result from galaxy mergers. Recent research indicates a noticeable decline in the rotation curve (RC) of the Milky Way (MW), suggesting the need for a new low-mass model to describe its…
Massive satellite accretions onto early galactic disks can lead to the deposition of dark matter in disk-like configurations that co-rotate with the galaxy. This phenomenon has potentially dramatic consequences for dark matter detection…
We explore the hypothesis that a passing satellite or dark matter subhalo has excited coherent oscillations of the Milky Way's stellar disk in the direction perpendicular to the Galactic midplane. This work is motivated by recent…
Only recently, complex models that include the global dynamics from dwarf satellite galaxies, dark matter halo structure, gas infalls, and stellar disk in a cosmological context became available to study the dynamics of disk galaxies such…
The outer disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is warped and flared. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain these phenomena, but none have quantitatively reproduced both features. Recent work has demonstrated that the Galactic stellar…
Previous models of galactic disk heating in interactions invoke restrictive assumptions not necessarily valid in modern LCDM contexts: that satellites and orbits are rigid and circular, with slow decay over many orbital times from dynamical…
We study the possibility that the Milky Way's cool stellar disc includes mergers with ancient stars. Galaxies are understood to form in a hierarchical manner, where smaller (proto-)galaxies merge into larger ones. Stars in galaxies, like…
Deep photometric surveys of the Milky Way have revealed diffuse structures encircling our Galaxy far beyond the "classical" limits of the stellar disk. This paper reviews results from our own and other observational programs, which together…
Recent observations of the stellar halo have uncovered the debris of an ancient merger, Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus, estimated to have occurred ~8 Gyr ago. Follow-up studies have associated GSE with a large-scale tilt in the stellar halo that…
The direction of the spin vectors of disk galaxies change over time. We present the tilting rate of a sample of galaxies in the NIHAO suite of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. Galaxies in our sample have been selected to be isolated…
We investigate the origin of warps in stellar disks using high-resolution Milky Way analogs from the IllustrisTNG50 simulation. Focusing on galaxies that experienced a major merger, we identify a characteristic azimuthal misalignment…
We present simulations of the formation of thick disks via the accretion of two-component satellites onto a pre-existing thin disk. Our goal is to establish the detailed characteristics of the thick disks obtained in this way, as well as…
We analyse the phase-space structure of simulated thick discs that are the result of a significant merger between a disc galaxy and a satellite. Our main goal is to establish what would be the characteristic imprints of a merger origin for…
It is increasingly apparent that common merger events play a large role in the evolution of disk galaxies at all cosmic times, from the wet accretion of gas-filled dwarf galaxies during the era of peak star formation, to the collisions…
Using the ARTEMIS set of 45 high-resolution cosmological simulations, we investigate a range of merger-induced dynamical transformations of Milky Way-like galaxies. We first identify populations of accreted stars on highly radial orbits,…
The infall of a satellite galaxy onto a galactic disk generally brings in angular momentum that is not aligned with the axis of the disk. The main dynamical issues addressed are what fraction of the orbital angular momentum of the satellite…
In this work we present two new $\sim10^9$ particle self-consistent simulations of the merger of a Sagittarius-like dwarf galaxy with a Milky Way-like disc galaxy. One model is a violent merger creating a thick disc, and a…
Circa 10 billion years ago the Milky Way merged with a massive satellite, Gaia-Enceladus. To gain insight into the properties of its debris we analyse in detail the suite of simulations from Villalobos & Helmi (2008), which includes an…
The evolution of the Milky Way disk, which contains most of the stars in the Galaxy, is affected by several phenomena. For example, the bar and the spiral arms of the Milky Way induce radial migration of stars and can trap or scatter stars…