Related papers: Secular Evolution of the Galactic Disk
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…
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…
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…
Spiral patterns are important agents of galaxy evolution. In this review, I describe how the redistribution of angular momentum by recurrent transient spiral patterns causes the random speeds of stars to rise over time, metallicity…
The problem of dynamical heating of galactic discs by spiral density waves is discussed using the shearing sheet model. The secular evolution of the disc is described quantitatively by a diffusion equation for the distribution function of…
Recent knowledge of Galactic dynamics suggests that stars radially move on the disk when they encounter transient spiral arms that are naturally generated during the process of disk formation. We argue that a large movement of the solar…
We explore the heating of the velocity distribution in the solar neighbourhood by stochastic spiral waves. Our investigation is based on direct numerical integration of initially circular test-particle orbits in the sheared sheet. We…
We consider a differentially rotating, 2D stellar disk perturbed by two steady state spiral density waves moving at different patterns speeds. Our investigation is based on direct numerical integration of initially circular test-particle…
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…
The velocity dispersion of nearby stars in the Galactic disc is well known to increase substantially with age; this is the so-called Age-Velocity relation, and is interpreted as a ``heating'' of the disc as a function of time. We have…
Vertically extended, high velocity dispersion stellar distributions appear to be a ubiquitous feature of disc galaxies, and both internal and external mechanisms have been proposed to be the major driver of their formation. However, it is…
We consider a differentially rotating, 2D stellar disk perturbed by two steady state spiral density waves moving at different patterns speeds. Our investigation is based on direct numerical integration of initially circular test-particle…
We perform local $N$-body simulations of disk galaxies and investigate the evolution of spiral arms. We calculate the time autocorrelation of the surface density of spiral arms and find that the typical evolution timescale is described by…
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…
Current understanding of the secular evolution of galactic disks suggests that this process is dominated by two or more heating mechanisms, which increase the random motions of stars in the disk. In particular, the gravitational influence…
We re-examine the age-velocity dispersion relation in the solar neighborhood using improved stellar age estimates that are based on Hipparcos parallaxes and recent stellar evolution calculations. The resulting relation shows that the Milky…
Observations of stars in the the solar vicinity show a clear tendency for old stars to have larger velocity dispersions. This relation is called the age-velocity dispersion relation (AVR) and it is believed to provide insight into the…
High-resolution imaging of some protoplanetary disks in scattered light reveals presence of the global spiral arms of significant amplitude, likely excited by massive planets or stellar companions. Assuming that these arms are density…
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…
Self-gravitating systems evolve toward the most tightly bound configuration that is reachable via available evolution processes. The inner parts shrink and the outer parts expand, provided that some physical process transports energy or…