Radial Migration Does Little for Galactic Disc Thickening

Understand

Non-axisymmetric components, such as spirals and central bars, play a major role in shaping galactic discs.

• An important aspect of the disc secular evolution driven by these perturbers is the radial migration of stars.
• It has been suggested recently that migration can populate a thick-disc component from inner-disc stars with high vertical energies.
• Since this has never been demonstrated in simulations, we study in detail the effect of radial migration on the disc velocity dispersion and disc thickness, by separating simulated stars into migrators and non-migrators.