The Influence of Radial Stellar Migration on the Chemical Evolution of the Milky Way

Abstract

Stellar migration is an important dynamical process in Galactic disk. Here we model the radial stellar migration in the Galactic disk with an analytical method, then add it to detailed Galactic chemical evolution model to study the influence of radial stellar migration on the chemical evolution of the Milky Way, especially for the abundance gradients. We found that the radial stellar migration in the Galactic disk can make the profile of the G-dwarf metallicity distribution of the solar neighborhood taller and narrower, thus it becomes another solution to the "G-dwarf problem". It can also scatter the age-metallicity relation. However, after the migration, the abundance distributions along the Galactic radius don't change much, namely the abundance gradients would not be flattened by the radial stellar migration, which is different from the predictions of many theoretical works. But it can flatten the radial gradients of the mean chemical abundance of stars, and older stars possess flatter abundance gradients than younger stars. The most significant effect of the radial stellar migration on the chemical abundance is that at a position it scatters the abundance of stars there from a relatively concentrated value to a range.

12 pages, 14 figures

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