Accepted to appear in Reviews of Modern Physics, 2014
For a PDF version of the article, click here.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0403
Abstract: Disk galaxies evolve over time through processes that may rearrange both the radial mass profile and the metallicity distribution within the disk. This review of such slow changes is largely, though not entirely, restricted to internally driven processes that can be distinguished from evolution driven by galaxy interactions. It both describes our current understanding of disk evolution and identifies areas where more work is needed. Stellar disks are heated through spiral scattering, which increases random motion components in the plane, while molecular clouds redirect some fraction of the random energy into vertical motion. The recently discovered process of radial migration at the corotation resonance of a transient spiral mode does not alter the underlying structure of the disk, since it neither heats the disk nor causes it to spread, but it does have a profound effect on the expected distribution of metallicities among the disk stars. Bars in disks are believed to be major drivers of secular evolution through interactions with the outer disk and with the halo. Once the material that makes up galaxy disks is converted into stars, their overall angular momentum distribution cannot change by much, but that of the gas is generally far more liable to rearrangement, allowing rings and pseudobulges to form. While simulations are powerful tools from which we have learned a great deal, those of disks may suffer from collisional relaxation that requires some results to be interpreted with caution.
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