| Description |
Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations show that an exponential disk could have assembled either around a merger-built classical bulge or as a pure disk galaxy. After their formation, such disks go through rapid dynamical evolution, where minor mergers, star burst triggered by inflowing gas, and turbulence play dominant roles. However, as these violent episodes become less frequent, secular processes start dominating the subsequent evolution of disk galaxies. In this talk, I will show how secular evolution brings morphological and dynamical changes to the disk and the bulge. This happens through the formation of non-axsymmetric structures such as bars, spiral arms, lopsidedness and warps, which facilitate the exchange and eventual redistribution of energy and angular momentum between the disk, bulge and the dark matter halo. I will show how the dark matter halos participate in the secular evolution. Finally, I will show how to construct a theoretical framework to describe secular evolution in real galaxies such as our own Milky Way.
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