Radial migration in disc galaxies — I. Transient spiral structure and dynamics

By Rok Roskar, V. Debattista, Thomas R. Quinn, James Wadsley. 2011

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We seek to understand the origin of radial migration in spiral galaxies by analysing in detail the structure and evolution of an idealized, isolated galactic disc. To understand the redistribution of stars, we characterize the time evolution of properties of spirals that spontaneously form in the disc. Our models unambiguously show that in such discs, single spirals are unlikely, but that a number of transient patterns may coexist in the disc. However, we also show that while spirals are transient in amplitude, at any given time the disc favours patterns of certain pattern speeds. Using several runs with different numerical parameters we show that the properties of spirals that occur spontaneously in the disc do not sensitively depend on resolution. The existence of multiple transient patterns has large implications for the orbits of stars in the disc, and we therefore examine the resonant scattering mechanisms that profoundly alter angular momenta of individual stars. We confirm that the corotation scattering mechanism described by Sellwood & Binney is responsible for the largest angular momentum changes in our simulations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/123620ad0d6981d059fa76249d89894032a7cc4b

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Citations in the corpus

The GALAH survey and Gaia DR2: dissecting the stellar disc’s phase space by age, action, chemistry, and location (2018, result): “Consistent with that picture, most migration models (Roškar et al. 2012; Vera-Ciro et al. 2014; Daniel & Wyse 2018; Minchev et al. 2018) find that stars on circular orbits and close to the plane are those that move most easily, and this is what we see (cf. Solway et al. 2012).”
Constraining the thick disc formation scenario of the Milky Way (2014, unknown): “The importance of migrations has been shown by Sellwood & Binney (2002) and has been studied in different N-body simulations (Roškar et al. (2012); Minchev et al. (2011); Di Matteo et al. (2011); Bird et al. (2012) among others).”
INSIDE OUT AND UPSIDE DOWN: TRACING THE ASSEMBLY OF A SIMULATED DISK GALAXY USING MONO-AGE STELLAR POPULATIONS (2013, background): “…also can gain or lose angular momentum, thereby changing their guiding centers, through resonant interactions11 with spiral waves (e.g., Sellwood & Binney 2002; Roškar et al. 2012a), bar resonance overlap (Minchev & Famaey 2010), and satellite perturbations (Quillen et al. 2009; Bird et al. 2012).”
THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF MONO-ABUNDANCE SUB-POPULATIONS OF THE MILKY WAY DISK (2011, background): “…of angular momentum without radially heating the disk (“radial migration”) happens naturally if spiral structure is transient (Sellwood & Binney 2002; Roškar et al. 2008, 2011), and has also been shown to occur through bar–spiral structure interactions (Minchev & Famaey 2010; Minchev et al. 2011).”
CONFIRMATION OF A STAR FORMATION BIAS IN TYPE Ia SUPERNOVA DISTANCES AND ITS EFFECT ON THE MEASUREMENT OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT (2014, background): “…simulations show only limited radial and azimuthal mixing in disk galaxies over 1 Gyr timescales, and the coherence over 10 Gyr is still surprisingly good for a large fraction of stars (see, e.g., Roskar et al. 2008a, 2008b, 2012; Brunetti et al. 2011; Bird et al. 2012; Di Matteo et al. 2013).”
Evolution of galactic discs: multiple patterns, radial migration, and disc outskirts (2012, background): “An outer pattern with a roughly constant pattern speed has also been reported from simulationsof non-barred galactic discs (Roškar et al., 2011; Sellwood,2011).”
Dawes Review 4: Spiral Structures in Disc Galaxies (2014, background): “The stars oscillate along the curve of circular motion by undergoing change in terms of both angular momentum and energy (Sellwood & Binney 2002; Grand et al. 2012a; Roškar et al. 2012; Baba et al. 2013).”
THE EFFECT OF RADIAL MIGRATION ON GALACTIC DISKS (2014, background): “…focused on hydrodynamical simulations of disks of gas and stars that evolve in isolation (Minchev et al. 2011, 2012b) or that result from the dissipative collapse of a rotating sphere of gas in the gravitational potential of a dark matter halo (Roškar et al. 2008, 2012, 2013; Loebman et al. 2011).”
THE APOGEE RED-CLUMP CATALOG: PRECISE DISTANCES, VELOCITIES, AND HIGH-RESOLUTION ELEMENTAL ABUNDANCES OVER A LARGE AREA OF THE MILKY WAY'S DISK (2014, background): “…significant radial mixing over these spatial scales has recently occurred (see Di Matteo et al. 2013 for a detailed discussion of this in the context of mixing induced by a bar; see also the azimuthal variations in the density of migrating stars in Figure 10 in Roškar et al. 2012); specifically, .”
Chemodynamical evolution of the Milky Way disk - I. The solar vicinity (2012, background): “15 by Roškar et al. (2012) contrasts the Fourier amplitudes for barred and unbarred disks: much stronger perturbationsare found in the inner disk (r=2 and 4 kpc, black and blue curves, respectively) for their barred simulation, S4, compared with the simulations without bars.”