Theoretical astrophysics and plasma physics at RPC

Abstract:

We analyse the heating of stellar discs by non axisymmetric structures and giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in N-body simulations of growing disc galaxies. The analysis resolves long-standing discrepancies between models and data by demonstrating the importance of distinguishing between measured age-velocity dispersion relations (AVRs) and the heating histories of the stars that make up the AVR. We fit both AVRs and heating histories with formulae ∝ tβ and determine the exponents β bar R and β bar z derived from in-plane and vertical AVRs and βR and βz from heating histories. Values of βz are in almost all simulations larger than values of βbarz , wheras values of βR are similar to or mildly larger than values of β bar R. Moreover, values of βz (β bar z) are generally larger than values of βR (β bar R). The dominant cause of these relations is the decline over the life of the disc in importance of GMCs as heating agents relative to spiral structure and the bar. We examine how age errors and biases in solar neighbourhood surveys in uence the measured AVR: they tend to decrease β values by smearing out ages and thus measured dispersions. We compare AVRs and velocity ellipsoid shapes σz/σR from simulations to Solar-neighbourhood data. We conclude that for the expected disc mass and dark halo structure, combined GMC and spiral/bar heating can explain the AVR of the Galactic thin disc. Strong departures of the disc mass or the dark halo structure from expectation spoil fits to the data.

Abstract:

We present evidence from the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) survey of chemically separated, kinematically distinct disc components in the solar neighbourhood.We apply probabilistic chemical selection criteria to separate our sample into α-low (‘thin disc’) and α-high (‘thick disc’) sequences. Using newly derived distances,which will be utilized in the upcoming RAVE DR5, we explore the kinematic trends as a function of metallicity for each of the disc components. For our α-low disc, we find a negative trend in the mean rotational velocity (Vφ) as a function of iron abundance ([Fe/H]). We measure a positive gradient ∂Vφ/∂[Fe/H] for the α-high disc, consistent with results from high-resolution surveys.We also find differences between the α-low and α-high discs in all three components of velocity dispersion.We discuss the implications of an α-low, metal-rich population originating from the inner Galaxy, where the orbits of these stars have been significantly altered by radial mixing mechanisms in order to bring them into the solar neighbourhood. The probabilistic separation we propose can be extended to other data sets for which the accuracy in [α/Fe] is not sufficient to disentangle the chemical disc components a priori. For such data sets which will also have significant overlap with Gaia DR1, we can therefore make full use of the improved parallax and proper motion data as it becomes available to investigate kinematic trends in these chemical disc components.

Abstract:

According to Muñoz-Gutiérrez et al. the orbit of comet 1P/Halley is chaotic with a surprisingly small Lyapunov time-scale of order its orbital period. In this work we analyse the origin of chaos in Halley's orbit and the growth of perturbations, in order to get a better understanding of this unusually short time-scale. We perform N-body simulations to model Halley's orbit in the Solar system and measure the separation between neighbouring trajectories. To be able to interpret the numerical results, we use a semi-analytical map to demonstrate different growth modes, i.e. linear, oscillatory or exponential, and transitions between these modes. We find the Lyapunov time-scale of Halley's orbit to be of order 300 yr, which is significantly longer than previous estimates in the literature. This discrepancy could be due to the different methods used to measure the Lyapunov time-scale. A surprising result is that next to Jupiter, also encounters with Venus contribute to the exponential growth in the next 3000 yr. Finally, we note an interesting application of the sub-linear, oscillatory growth mode to an ensemble of bodies moving through the Solar system. Whereas in the absence of encounters with a third body the ensemble spreads out linearly in time, the accumulation of weak encounters can increase the lifetime of such systems due to the oscillatory behaviour.