We discuss the occurrence of subcritical star formation in the outskirts of some galactic discs and across LSB galaxies, contrary to the picture that star formation happens only when the gas surface density is above a critical threshold density. This raises the question of whether the Toomre Q-criterion for gas alone is valid for correlating the gas distribution to star formation or rather some effective Q-parameter, taking account of components such as stars, dark matter and magnetic fields, is more representative of the correlation between gas instability and star formation activity. As a potential candidate, we investigate the role of dark matter in triggering subcritical star formation, particularly at the outskirts where dark matter is dominant. Indeed, our axisymmetric analysis favours the picture that dark matter contributes to disc instability at the subcritical regime where gas seems stable when dark matter is neglected.
Star formation in magnetically subcritical clouds is investigated using a three-dimensional non-ideal magneto-hydrodynamics simulation. Since rapid cloud collapse is suppressed until the magnetic flux is sufficiently removed from the initially magnetically subcritical cloud by ambipolar diffusion, it takes > 5-10t_ff to form a protostar, where t_ff is the freefall timescale of the initial cloud. The angular momentum of the star forming cloud is efficiently transferred to the interstellar medium before the rapid collapse begins, and the collapsing cloud has a very low angular momentum. Unlike t…
Observations show that galaxies and their interstellar media are pervaded by strong magnetic fields with energies in the diffuse component being at least comparable to the thermal and even as large or larger than the turbulent energy. Such strong magnetic fields prevent the formation of stars because patches of the interstellar medium are magnetically subcritical. Here we present the results from global numerical simulations of strongly magnetised and self-gravitating galactic discs, which show that the buoyancy of the magnetic field due to the Parker instability leads at first to the formatio…
We consider the dynamics of rotationally supported thin galactic disc composed of stars and gas under the influence of external tidal field and derive the coupled differential equations governing the evolution of instabilities. Further linearising the governing equation a modified dispersion relation and stability criterion for appraising the stability of the two fluid galactic disc under the influence of external tidal field is obtained. Possible applications and method for the same are discussed.
With the use of a detailed Milky Way nonaxisymmetric potential, observationally and dynamically constrained, the effects of the bar and the spiral arms in the Galaxy are studied in the disc and in the stellar halo. Especially the trapping of stars in the disc and Galactic halo by resonances on the Galactic plane, induced by the Galactic bar, has been analysed in detail. To this purpose, a new method is presented to delineate the trapping regions using empirical diagrams of some orbital properties obtained in the Galactic potential. In these diagrams we plot in the inertial Galactic frame a cha…
We have derived the abundances of 36 chemical elements in one Cepheid star, ASAS 181024--2049.6, located R$_{\rm G}= 2.53$ kpc from the Galactic center. This star falls within a region of the inner thin disc poorly sampled in Cepheids. Our spectral analysis shows that iron, magnesium, silicon, calcium and titanium LTE abundances in that star support the presence of a plateau-like abundance distribution in the thin disc within 5 kpc of the Galactic center, as previously suggested by \cite{Maret15}. If confirmed, the flattening of the abundance gradient within that region could be the result of …
We report the detection of the Galactic nuclear disc in line-of-sight kinematics of stars, measured with infrared spectroscopy from APOGEE. This stellar component of the nuclear disc has an extent and rotation velocity V ~ 120kms comparable to the gas disc in the central molecular zone. The current data suggest that this disc is kinematically cool and has a small vertical extent of order 50pc. The stellar kinematics suggest a truncation radius/steep decline of the stellar disc at a galactocentric radius R ~ 150pc, and provide tentative evidence for an overdensity at the position of the ring fo…
We have made the first attempt to derive the chemical properties of the Galactic disc at its very central part using high-resolution infrared spectroscopic observations of four classical Cepheids. Those stars are located at Galactocentric distances smaller than 1 kpc. All investigated stars show near-to-solar elemental abundances. By combining these new data with our previous studies, this result suggests that the radial distribution of iron abundance on a logarithmic scale gradually increases from the outskirts of the Galactic disc to Galactocentric distances of about 2-4 kpc, reaching there …
We aim to understand the accretion history of the Milky Way by exploring the vertical and radial properties of the Galactic thick disc. We study the chemical and kinematic properties of roughly a thousand spectra of faint magnitude foreground Galactic stars observed serendipitously during extra-galactic surveys in four lines-of-sight: three in the southern Galactic hemisphere (surveys of the Carina, Fornax and Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxies) and one in the northern Galactic hemisphere (a survey of the Sextans dwarf spheroidal galaxy). The foreground stars span distances up to 3kpc from the…
We study the properties of the straight segments forming in N-body simulations of the galactic discs. The properties of these features are consistent with the observational ones summarized by Chernin at al. (2001). Unlike some previous suggestions to explain the straight segments as gas dynamical instabilities, they form in our models in the stellar system. We suggest that the straight segments are forming as a response of the rotating disc to a gravity of the regions of enhanced density (overdensities) corotating with the disc. The kinematics of stars near the prominent overdensities is consi…
We present simulations of isolated disc galaxies in a realistic environment performed with the Tree-SPMHD-Code Gadget-3. Our simulations include a spherical circum-galactic medium (CGM) surrounding the galactic disc, motivated by observations and the results of cosmological simulations. We present three galactic models with different halo masses between 10e10 Msol and 10e12 Msol, and for each we use two different approaches to seed the magnetic field, as well as a control simulation without a magnetic field. We find that the amplification of the magnetic field in the centre of the disc leads t…
A suite of idealised, global, gravitationally unstable, star-forming galactic disc simulations with 2 pc spatial resolution, performed with the adaptive mesh refinement code {\sc ramses} is used in this paper to predict the emergent effects of supernova feedback. The simulations include a simplified prescriptions for formation of single stellar populations of mass $\sim 100 \, M_{\odot}$, radiative cooling, photoelectric heating, an external gravitational potential for a dark matter halo and an old stellar disc, self-gravity, and a novel implementation of supernova feedback. The results of the…
Magnetic fields are observed beyond the peripheries of optically detected galactic discs, while numerical models of their origin and the typical magnitudes are still absent. Previously, studies of galactic dynamo have avoided considering the peripheries of galactic discs because of the very limited (though gradually growing) knowledge about the local properties of the interstellar medium. Here we investigate the possibility that magnetic fields can be generated in the outskirts of discs, taking the Milky Way as an example. We consider a simple evolving galactic dynamo model in the "no-z" formu…
Observations of the spatial distribution and kinematics of young stars in the Galactic centre can be interpreted as showing that the stars occupy one, or possibly two, discs of radii ~0.05-0.5 pc. The most prominent (`clockwise') disc exhibits a strong warp: the normals to the mean orbital planes in the inner and outer third of the disc differ by ~60 deg. Using an analytical model based on Laplace-Lagrange theory, we show that such warps arise naturally and inevitably through vector resonant relaxation between the disc and the surrounding old stellar cluster.
The Gaia mission, with its unprecedented astrometric and photometric precision, combined with its Radial Velocity Spectrometer, will provide to the astronomical community a wealth of necessary constraints to disentangle between the different formation scenarios of the Galactic thick disc. The aim of this review is to present some of the recent results obtained spectroscopically concerning this Galactic structure, and highlight the open questions that still remain to be answered under the Gaia era. These concern mainly the measurement of the chemo-dynamical properties of the Milky Way at the in…
The elemental abundance structure of the Galactic disc has been extensively studied in the solar neighbourhood using long-lived stars such as F and G dwarfs or K and M giants. These are stars whose atmospheres preserve the chemical composition of their natal gas clouds, and are hence excellent tracers of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. As far as we are aware, there are no such studies of the inner Galactic disc, which hampers our ability to constrain and trace the origin and evolution of the Milky Way. Therefore, we aim in this study to establish the elemental abundance trend(s) of the d…
We study the dynamical evolution of stars and gas close to the centre of the Milky Way. Any plausible means of forming the young stars observed at the Galactic Centre leaves behind a residual gas disc at ~0.01pc radii. We show that the combined effects of viscous accretion and gravitational interactions with stars do not remove the residual gas efficiently, and that a substantial gas disc, interior to the stellar disc, persists for >10Myr after the stars form. Since no such disc is currently seen at the Galactic Centre we argue that it has been accreted by the super-massive black hole. This sc…
I discuss a search for red giant stars in the Galactic halo with light-element abundances similar to second-generation globular cluster stars, and discuss the implications of such a population for globular cluster formation models and the balance between in situ star formation and accretion for the assembly of the Galactic halo.
Until recently it was thought that high Galactic latitude clouds were a non-star-forming ensemble. However, in a previous study we reported the discovery of two embedded clusters (ECs) far away from the Galactic plane ($\sim5$ kpc). In our recent star cluster catalogue we provided additional high and intermediate latitude cluster candidates. This work aims to clarify if our previous detection of star clusters far away from the disc represents just an episodic event or if the star cluster formation is currently a systematic phenomenon in the Galactic halo. We analyse the nature of four clusters…
We analyse the mechanisms ruling galactic disc heating through the dynamics of space velocities $U$, $V$ and $W$, extracted from the Geneva-Copenhagen catalogue. To do this, we use a model based on non-extensive statistical mechanics, where we derive the probability distribution functions that quantify the non-Gaussian effects. Furthermore, we find that the deviation $q-1$ at a given stellar age follows non-random behaviour. As a result, the $q$-index behaviour indicates that the vertical component $W$, perpendicular to the Galactic plane, does not ``heat up'' at random, which is in disagreeme…
We perform high resolution direct $N$-body simulations to study the effect of an accretion disc on stellar dynamics in an active galactic nucleus (AGN). We show that the interaction of the nuclear stellar cluster (NSC) with the gaseous disc (AD) leads to formation of a stellar disc in the central part of the NSC. The accretion of stars from the stellar disc onto the super-massive black hole is balanced by the capture of stars from the NSC into the stellar disc, yielding a stationary density profile. We derive the migration time through the AD to be 3\% of the half-mass relaxation time of the N…
We argue that resonant friction has a dramatic effect on a disc whose rotation direction is misaligned with that of its host nuclear star cluster. The disc's gravity causes gravitational perturbation of the cluster that in turn exerts a strong torque back onto the disc. We argue that this torque may be responsible for the observed disruption of the clockwise disc of young stars in the Galactic Center, and show in numerical experiments that it produces the observed features in the distribution of the stars' angular momenta. More generally, we speculate that the rotation of nuclear star clusters…
