# Could the Galactic disk heating be due to Globular Cluster impacts - Astrophysics > Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract: So far, six mechanisms have been proposed to account for the Galactic diskheating. Of these, the most important appear to be a combination of scatteringof stars by molecular clouds and by spiral arms. We study a further mechanism,namely, the repeated disk impact of the original Galactic Globular Clusterpopulation up to the present. We find that Globular Clusters could havecontributed at most a small fraction of the current vertical energy of thedisk, as they could heat the whole disk to {$\sigma$}${z}$ = 5.5kms$^{{ m -}{ m 1}}$ c.f. the observed 18 and 39 kms$^{{ m -} { m 1}}$ for the thickand thin disks respectively. We find that the rate of rise of disk heat$\alpha$=0.22 in \textit{$\sigma$}${z}$ $\sim t^{\alpha}$ with \textit tbeing time, is close to that found for scattering by molecular clouds.

Author: D. Vande Putte, Mark Cropper, Ignacio Ferreras

Source: https://arxiv.org/