Stellar migration in the Auriga simulations

Abstract

We study the presence and importance of stellar migration in the evolution of 17 Milky-Way like disk galaxies with stellar mass $10<\text{log}(M_{\ast }/{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot })<11$ from the Auriga suite of zoom-in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. We compare the birth radii of the stars to their radii at $z=0$ for each system and present mean values of the strength of stellar migration as a function of radius and stellar age which vary between 1-4 kpc. We also investigate the effect of migration on age and metallicity radial profiles in the disks. We find several cases of age gradient flattening due to migration, but significant changes to metallicity profiles only for older stellar populations and disks that develop a strong bar. Furthermore, we study stellar migration from the perspective of the change of the galactocentric radius ($\Delta R$) and orbital guiding centre radius ($\Delta R_g$) of stellar particles between given time intervals. We find that stars migrate approximately as a diffusion process only in the outer parts of the disks and for particular galaxies that have a weak bar. Strongly barred galaxies in our sample show larger stellar migration but its timestep evolution is slower-than-diffusion. Finally, we give parametrisations that encapsulate the dependence of the strength of the radial migration as a function of time and radius, for incorporation into (semi-)analytic models of galaxy evolution.

21 pages, 19 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• Galactic Chemical Evolution Models Favor an Extended Type Ia Supernova Delay-Time Distribution
• Probing galaxy evolution from $z=0$ to $z\simeq 10$ through galaxy scaling relations in three L-Galaxies flavours
• Bar-spiral interaction produces radial migration and star formation bursts
• Fundamental limits to orbit reconstruction due to non-conservation of stellar actions in a Milky Way-like simulation
• Tracing the cosmological origin of gas that fuels in situ star formation in TNG50 galaxies
• The SAMI Survey: Evidence for dynamical coupling of ionised gas and young stellar populations
• Comparing radial migration in dark matter and MOND regimes
• The impact of radial migration on disk galaxy star formation histories: II. Role of bar strength, disk thickness, and merger history