Related papers: Radial Mixing in Galactic Discs
We develop a physical model for how galactic disks survive and/or are destroyed in interactions. Based on dynamical arguments, we show gas primarily loses angular momentum to internal torques in a merger. Gas within some characteristic…
Star formation rates in the centers of disk galaxies often vastly exceed those at larger radii. We investigate the idea that these central starbursts are self-regulated, with the momentum flux injected to the ISM by star formation balancing…
The perturbation mechanism of the Galactic disk has puzzled us for a long time. The imprints from perturbations provide important diagnostics on the disk formation and evolution. Here we try to constrain when the vertical perturbation took…
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…
Spiral density waves are known to exist in many astrophysical disks, potentially affecting disk structure and evolution. We conduct a numerical study of the effects produced by a density wave, evolving into a shock, on the characteristics…
Mergers between gas--rich disks and less--massive dwarf galaxies are studied using numerical simulation. As the orbit of a satellite decays through dynamical friction, the primary disk develops large-amplitude spirals in response to its…
Young massive stars in the central parsec of our Galaxy are best explained by star formation within at least one, and possibly two, massive self-gravitating gaseous discs. With help of numerical simulations, we here consider whether the…
In earlier papers in this series we determined the intrinsic stellar disc kinematics of fifteen intermediate to late type edge-on spiral galaxies using a dynamical modeling technique. From the photometry we find that intrinsically more…
Theoretical work suggests that a young star's angular momentum and rotation rate may be strongly influenced by magnetic interactions with its circumstellar disk. A generic prediction of these 'disk-locking' (DL) theories is that a…
The rotation dynamics of spiral galaxies is modeled using a sum of two mass distributions: a spherical bulge and a thin disk. The density functions representing these mass distributions are calculated from the total angular momentum of the…
The density-wave theory of spiral structure proposes that star formation occurs in or near a spiral-shaped region of higher density that rotates rigidly within the galactic disk at a fixed pattern speed. In most interpretations of this…
We investigate models of the Milky Way disc taking into account simultaneously the bar and a two-armed quasi-static spiral pattern. Away from major resonance overlaps, the mean stellar radial motions in the plane are essentially a linear…
Stars in the Galactic disk have mean radial velocities $\overline{v}_R$ that oscillate as a function of angular momentum $J_\varphi$. This `$J_\varphi$-${\overline{v}}_R$ wave' signal also exhibits a systematic phase shift when stars are…
One of the important consequences of a newly discovered secular dynamical evolution process of spiral galaxies (Zhang 1996,1998,1999) is that the orbiting disk matter receives energy injection each time it crosses the spiral density wave…
The behavior of the relative magnesium abundances in the thin-disk stars versus their orbital radii suggests that the star formation rate in the thin disk decreases with increasing Galactocentric distance, and there was no star formation…
The magnetic fields associated with young stellar objects are expected to have an hour-glass geometry, i.e., the magnetic field lines are pinched as they thread the equatorial plane surrounding the forming star but merge smoothly onto a…
In star forming disk galaxies, matter circulation between stars and the interstellar gas, and, in particular the energy input by random and clustered supernova explosions, determine the dynamical and chemical evolution of the ISM, and hence…
We characterize the radial migration of stars in the disk plane by calculating the diffusion coefficient and the diffusion time-scale for a bulge-disk N-body self-consistent system with a marginally-stable Toomre-Q parameter. We find that…
We include feedback in global hydrodynamic simulations in order to study the star formation properties, and gas structure and dynamics, in models of galactic disks. We extend previous models by implementing feedback in gravitationally bound…
Cosmic metallicity evolution possibly creates the diversity of star formation modes at different epochs. Gravitational fragmentation of circumstellar discs provides an important formation channel of multiple star systems, including close…