Destruction of star clusters due to the radial migration in spiral galaxies

Abstract

Most stars in galactic disks are believed to be born as a member of star clusters or associations. Star clusters formed in disks are disrupted due to the tidal stripping and the evolution of star clusters themselves, and as a results new stars are supplied to the galactic disks. We performed $N$-body simulations of star clusters in galactic disks, in which both star clusters and galactic disks are modeled as $N$-body ("live") systems, and as a consequence the disks form transient and recurrent spiral arms. In such non-steady spiral arms, star clusters migrate radially due to the interaction with spiral arms. We found that the migration timescale is a few hundreds Myr and that the angular momentum changes of star clusters are at most $\sim 50$% in 1 Gyr. Radial migration of star clusters to the inner region of galaxies results in a fast disruption of the star clusters because of a stronger tidal field in the inner region of the galaxy. This effect is not negligible for the disruption timescale of star clusters in galactic disks. Stars stripped from clusters form tidal tails which spread over 1--2 kpc. While the spatial distribution of tidal tails change in a complicated way due to the non-steady spiral arms, the velocity distribution conserve well even if the tidal tails are located at a few kpc from their parent clusters. Tidal tails of clusters in galactic disks might be detected using velocity plots.

5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for MNRAS

References in corpus (10)

• The evolution of the Galactic metallicity gradient from high-resolution spectroscopy of open clusters
• The dynamics of stars around spiral arms
• The life cycle of star cluster in a tidal field
• The influence of residual gas expulsion on the evolution of the Galactic globular cluster system and the origin of the Population II halo
• 6th and 8th Order Hermite Integrator for N-body Simulations
• The Blueshifting and Baldwin effects for the [OIII] 5007 Emission Line in Type 1 Active Galactic Nuclei
• The effect of spiral arm passages on the evolution of stellar clusters
• The origin of large peculiar motions of star-forming regions and spiral structures of our Galaxy
• Formation and evolution of clumpy tidal tails around globular clusters
• Star cluster evolution in barred disc galaxies. I. Planar periodic orbits

Cited by in corpus (16)

• The GALAH survey: tracing the Galactic disk with Open Clusters
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: Probes of the inner disk abundance gradient
• New insights on the formation of nuclear star clusters
• The evolution of the Milky Way: New insights from open clusters
• Star Clusters in Evolving Galaxies
• The GALAH Survey and Gaia DR2: (Non)existence of five sparse high-latitude open clusters
• The evolution of the Sun's birth cluster and the search for the solar siblings with Gaia
• Mergers, tidal interactions, and mass exchange in a population of disc globular clusters
• Open Clusters as Tracers on Radial Migration of the Galactic Disk
• SN1991bg-like supernovae are associated with old stellar populations
• Kinematics of symmetric Galactic longitudes to probe the spiral arms of the Milky Way with Gaia
• The role of radial migration in open cluster and field star populations with Gaia dr3
• Photometric and spectroscopic study of the intermediate-age open cluster NGC 2355
• Searching for Solar Siblings in APOGEE and $Gaia$ DR2 with N-body Simulations
• Stellar Orbital Studies in Normal Spiral Galaxies I: Restrictions to the Pitch Angle
• Tracking Cluster Debris (TraCD)- I. Dissolution of clusters and searching the solar cradle