Interactions between galaxies have been studied since long ago. However, the impact of nearby dwarf galaxies on the disk of the Milky Way has been the focus of relatively fewer recent studies. Some of the disturbances seen in the Gaia data (substructures in the R-Vphi plane or the phase spiral) can be due to the past interactions of our Galaxy with the Sagittarius dwarf that approached in several past pericenters. Typically, these interactions leave imprints in the phase space of the perturbed disk that persist but transform with time (phase mixing or self-gravitating). In this project we will study the different imprints that different orbits of the perturber satellite galaxy produce in a disk and how these imprints evolve with time. We will compare these models to a more realistic simulation and evaluate how much the observed imprints can tell us about the conditions of the interactions in the pericenter times.
In this project the student will learn to analyse different simulations (from simple toy models to zoom-in cosmological simulations) and to use Gaia data.