The stellar velocity distribution in the solar neighbourhood

By R. D. Simone, Xiaoan Wu, S. Tremaine. 2003

167 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 confirm the conclusion of other investigators that heating by spiral structure can explain the principal features of the age–velocity dispersion relation and other parameters of the velocity distribution in the solar neighbourhood. In addition, we find that heating by strong transient spirals can naturally explain the presence of small-scale structure in the velocity distribution (‘moving groups’). Heating by spiral structure also explains why the stars in a single velocity-space moving group have a wide range of ages, a result that is difficult to understand in the traditional model in which these structures result from inhomogeneous star formation. Thus we suggest that old moving groups arise from irregularities in the Galactic potential rather than from irregularities in the star formation rate.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8b23ddd33072f03ce21b76882e4f91fd99be80ae

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. I. Minchev
2. J. Binney
3. Jo Bovy
4. M. Haywood
5. M. Mayor
6. R. Schönrich
7. S. Udry
8. W. Dehnen

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. M. Mayor
2. S. Udry
3. M. Haywood
4. W. Dehnen
5. J. Vallée
6. E. Athanassoula
7. Stephan Rosswog
8. B. Moore

Citations in the corpus

• The Spiral Arms and Interarm Separation of the Milky Way: An Updated Statistical Study (2005, background): “De Simone et al. (2004) studied the stellar velocity distribution in the solar neighborhood, using stochastic spiral waves.”
• Local kinematics and the local standard of rest (2009, background): “…around the modelV and to a lesser extentU distributions are readily accounted for by the well known stellar moving groups (Dehnen 1998), likely caused by the dynamical influence of the Galactic bar and spiral structure (Dehnen 1999; De Simone et al. 2004; Antoja et al. 2009; Minchev et al. 2009).”
• THE MILKY WAY TOMOGRAPHY WITH SDSS. III. STELLAR KINEMATICS (2009, unknown): “As suggested by De Simone et al. (2004), these moving groups may arise from irregularities in the Galactic gravitational potential.”
• Radial mixing and the transition between the thick and thin Galactic discs (2008, methodology): “Radial migration based on the effect of stochastic spiral waves has been studied by De Simone et al. (2004), giving similar values, limited to at most ± 2 kpc.”
• Constraining the Milky Way assembly history with Galactic Archaeology (2016, background): “Previous studies of heating mechanisms have concentrated on heating from transient spiral density waves (e.g., Carlberg et al. 1985; De Simone et al. 2004; Jenkins 1992).”
• The Nearest Young Moving Groups (2006, background): “…-plane can be explained as the result of the juxtaposition of several star forming bursts in adjacent cells of the velocity field (see Montes et al. 2001, and references therein) or dynamical perturbations caused by spiral waves (De Simone et al. 2004; Famaey et al. 2005; Quillen & Minchev 2005).”
• Local kinematics of K and M giants from CORAVEL/Hipparcos/Tycho-2 data: Revisiting the concept of superclusters (2004, methodology): “We thus conclude that this substructure in velocity space is probably related to the dynamical perturbation by transient spiral waves (as recently modelled by De Simone et al. 2004) rather than to cluster remnants.”