Could the Galactic disc heating be due to globular cluster impacts?

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Galaxy: Disc, Globular Clusters: General

Scientific paper

So far, six mechanisms have been proposed to account for the Galactic disc heating. Of these, the most important appear to be a combination of scattering of stars by molecular clouds and by spiral arms. We study a further mechanism, namely the repeated disc impact of the original Galactic globular cluster population up to the present. We find that globular clusters could have contributed at most a small fraction of the current vertical energy of the disc, as they could heat the whole disc to σz = 5.5kms-1 (c.f. the observed 18 and 39 kms-1 for the thick and thin discs, respectively). We find that the rate of rise of disc heat (α = 0.22 in σz ~ tα with t being time) is close to that found for scattering by molecular clouds.

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