No Arabic abstract
Context: According to numerical simulations, stars are not always kept at their birth galactocentric distances but migrate. The importance of this radial migration in shaping galactic light distributions is still unclear. However, if it is indeed important, galaxies with different surface brightness (SB) profiles must display differences in their stellar population properties. Aims: We investigate the role of radial migration on the light distribution and the radial stellar content by comparing the inner colour, age and metallicity gradients for galaxies with different SB profiles. We define these inner parts avoiding the bulge and bar regions and up to around three disc scale-lengths (type I, pure exponential) or the break radius (type II, downbending; type III, upbending). Methods: We analyse 214 spiral galaxies from the CALIFA survey covering different SB profiles. We make use of GASP2D and SDSS data to characterise their light distribution and obtain colour profiles. The stellar age and metallicity profiles are computed using a methodology based on full-spectrum fitting techniques (pPXF, GANDALF, and STECKMAP) to the IFS CALIFA data. Results: The distributions of the colour, stellar age and stellar metallicity gradients in the inner parts for galaxies displaying different SB profiles are unalike as suggested by Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Anderson-Darling tests. We find a trend in which type II galaxies show the steepest profiles of all and type III the shallowest, with type I galaxies displaying an intermediate behaviour. Conclusions: These results are consistent with a scenario in which radial migration is more efficient for type III galaxies than for type I systems with type II galaxies presenting the lowest radial migration efficiency. In such scenario, radial migration mixes the stellar content flattening the radial stellar properties and... [abriged]
We study how migration affects stars of a galaxy with a thin stellar disc and thicker stellar components. The simulated galaxy has a strong bar and lasting spiral arms. We find that the amplitude of the churning (change in angular momentum) is similar for thin and thick components, and of limited amplitude, and that stars of all components can be trapped at the corotation of the bar. At the exception of those stars trapped at the corotation, we find that stars that are far from their initial guiding radius are more likely so due to blurring rather than churning effects. We compare the simulation to orbits integration with a fixed gravitational potential rotating at a constant speed. In the latter case, stars trapped at corotation are churned periodically outside and inside the corotation radius, with a zero net average. However, as the bar speed of the simulated galaxy decreases and its corotation radius increases, stars trapped at corotation for several Gyrs can be churned outwards on average. We study the location of extreme migrators (stars experimenting the largest churning) and find that extreme migrators come from regions on the leading side of the effective potential local maxima.
We study the radial structure of the stellar mass surface density ($mu$) and stellar population age as a function of the total stellar mass and morphology for a sample of 107 galaxies from the CALIFA survey. We use the fossil record to recover the star formation history (SFH) in spheroidal and disk dominated galaxies with masses from 10$^9$ to 10$^{12}$ M$_odot$. We derive the half mass radius, and we find that galaxies are on average 15% more compact in mass than in light. HMR/HLR decreases with increasing mass for disk galaxies, but is almost constant in spheroidal galaxies. We find that the galaxy-averaged stellar population age, stellar extinction, and $mu$ are well represented by their values at 1 HLR. Negative radial gradients of the stellar population ages support an inside-out formation. The larger inner age gradients occur in the most massive disk galaxies that have the most prominent bulges; shallower age gradients are obtained in spheroids of similar mass. Disk and spheroidal galaxies show negative $mu$ gradients that steepen with stellar mass. In spheroidal galaxies $mu$ saturates at a critical value that is independent of the galaxy mass. Thus, all the massive spheroidal galaxies have similar local $mu$ at the same radius (in HLR units). The SFH of the regions beyond 1 HLR are well correlated with their local $mu$, and follow the same relation as the galaxy-averaged age and $mu$; suggesting that local stellar mass surface density preserves the SFH of disks. The SFH of bulges are, however, more fundamentally related to the total stellar mass, since the radial structure of the stellar age changes with galaxy mass even though all the spheroid dominated galaxies have similar radial structure in $mu$. Thus, galaxy mass is a more fundamental property in spheroidal systems while the local stellar mass surface density is more important in disks.
Radial migration is an important process in the evolution of the Galactic disk. The metallicity gradient of open clusters and its outliers provide an effective way to probe for this process. In this work, we compile metallicity, age, and kinematic parameters for 225 open clusters and carry out a quantitative analysis of radial migration via the calculated migration distances. Based on clusters with age $< 0.5$ Gyr, we obtain the present-day metallicity gradient of $-0.074 pm 0.007$ dex/kpc. Along this gradient distributes three sequences, and clusters in the upper, the middle, and the lower groups are found to be old outward-migrators, in-situ clusters, and inward-migrators, respectively. The migration distance increases with age, but its most effective time is probably less than 3 Gyr. The metallicity gradient breaks out at $R_g$ (guiding center radius) $sim11.5$ kpc, which is caused by the lack of young open clusters in the outer disk and the presence of old outward-migrators in the upper sequence. It shows that this boundary is related to the different effects of radial migration between the inner and outer disks. We also found many special open clusters in and near the outer disk of $R > 11$ kpc and a steeper metallicity gradient from the inner disk of $R_g < 7$ kpc, which tells a complicated evolution history of the Galactic disk by different effects of stellar radial migration.
Using the RAdial Velocity Experiment fourth data release (RAVE DR4), and a new metallicity calibration that will be also taken into account in the future RAVE DR5, we investigate the existence and the properties of super-solar metallicity stars ([M/H] > +0.1 dex) in the sample, and in particular in the Solar neighbourhood. We find that RAVE is rich in super-solar metallicity stars, and that the local metallicity distribution function declines remarkably slowly up to +0.4 dex. Our results show that the kinematics and height distributions of the super-solar metallicity stars are identical to those of the [M/H] < 0 thin-disc giants that we presume were locally manufactured. The eccentricities of the super-solar metallicity stars indicate that half of them are on a roughly circular orbit (e < 0.15), so under the assumption that the metallicity of the interstellar medium at a given radius never decreases with time, they must have increased their angular momenta by scattering at corotation resonances of spiral arms from regions far inside the Solar annulus. The likelihood that a star will migrate radially does not seem to decrease significantly with increasing amplitude of vertical oscillations within range of oscillation amplitudes encountered in the disc.
We present a modified version of the L-GALAXIES 2020 semi-analytic model of galaxy evolution, which includes significantly increased direct metal enrichment of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) by supernovae (SNe). These more metal-rich outflows do not require increased mass-loading factors, in contrast to some other galaxy evolution models. This modified L-GALAXIES 2020 model is able to simultaneously reproduce the gas-phase metallicity $(Z_{rm g})$ and stellar metallicity $(Z_{*})$ radial profiles observed in nearby disc galaxies by MaNGA and MUSE, as well as the observed mass - metallicity relations for gas and stars at $z=0$ and their evolution back to $zsim{}2-3$. A direct CGM enrichment fraction of $sim{}90%$ for SNe-II is preferred. We find that massive disc galaxies have slightly flatter $Z_{rm g}$ profiles than their lower-mass counterparts in L-GALAXIES 2020, due to more efficient enrichment of their outskirts via inside-out growth and metal-rich accretion. Such a weak, positive correlation between stellar mass and $Z_{rm g}$ profile slope is also seen in our MaNGA-DR15 sample of 571 star-forming disc galaxies. Although, below ${rm log}(M_{*}/{rm M}_{odot})sim{}10.0$ this observational result is strongly dependent on the metallicity diagnostic and morphological selection chosen. In addition, a lowered maximum SN-II progenitor mass of $25{rm M}_{odot}$, reflecting recent theoretical and observational estimates, can also provide a good match to observed metallicity profiles at $z=0$ in L-GALAXIES 2020. However, this model version fails to reproduce an evolution in $Z_{rm g}$ at fixed mass over cosmic time, or the magnesium abundances observed in the intracluster medium (ICM).