The second data release of the Gaia mission has revealed, in stellar velocity and action space, multiple ridges, the exact origin of which is still debated. Recently, we demonstrated that a large Galactic bar with pattern speed 39 km/s/kpc does create most of the observed ridges. Among those ridges, the Hercules moving group would then be associated to orbits trapped at the co-rotation resonance of the bar. Here we show that a distinctive prediction of such a model is that the angular momentum of Hercules at the Sun's radius must significantly decrease with increasing Galactocentric azimuth, i.e. when getting closer to the major axis of the bar. We show that such a dependence of the angular momentum of trapped orbits on the azimuth would on the other hand not happen close to the outer Lindblad resonance of a faster bar, unless the orbital distribution is still far from phase-mixed, namely for a bar perturbation younger than ~ 2 Gyr. Using Gaia DR2 and Bayesian distances from the StarHorse code, and tracing the average Galactocentric radial velocity as a function of angular momentum and azimuth, we show that the Hercules angular momentum changes significantly with azimuth as expected for the co-rotation resonance of a dynamically old large bar.
We use a sample of ~350 RR Lyrae stars with radial velocities and Gaia DR2 proper motions to study orbital properties of the Hercules-Aquila Cloud (HAC) and Virgo Over-density (VOD). We demonstrate that both structures are dominated by stars on highly eccentric orbits, with peri-centres around ~1 kpc and apo-centres between 15 and 25 kpc from the Galactic centre. Given that the stars in the HAC and the VOD occupy very similar regions in the space spanned by integrals of motion, we conclude that these diffuse debris clouds are part of the same accretion event. More precisely, these inner halo s…
The length and pattern speed of the Milky Way bar are still controversial. Photometric and spectroscopic surveys of the inner Galaxy, as well as gas kinematics, favour a long and slowly rotating bar, with corotation around a Galactocentric radius of 6 kpc. On the other hand, the existence of the Hercules stream in local velocity space favours a short and fast bar with corotation around 4 kpc. This follows from the fact that the Hercules stream looks like a typical signature of the outer Lindblad resonance of the bar. As we showed recently, reconciling this local stream with a slow bar would ne…
The ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Hercules has an extremely elongated morphology with both photometric overdensities and kinematic members at large radii, suggesting that it may be tidally disrupting due to a previous close encounter with the Milky Way. To explain its observational peculiarities, we present a deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging study of Hercules and its surrounding regions and investigate its tidal history through a careful search for a distance gradient along its stretched body. Our off-center HST data clearly resolve a main sequence, showing that the stellar extension seen …
We analyzed the velocity space of the thin and thick-disk Gaia white dwarf population within 100 pc looking for signatures of the Hercules stellar stream. We aimed to identify those objects belonging to the Hercules stream and, by taking advantage of white dwarf stars as reliable cosmochronometers, to derive a first age distribution. We applied a kernel density estimation to the $UV$ velocity space of white dwarfs. For the region where a clear overdensity of stars was found, we created a 5-D space of dynamic variables. We applied a hierarchichal clustering method, HDBSCAN, to this 5-D space, i…
The origin of the Hercules stream, the most prominent velocity substructure in the Solar neighbour disc stars, is still under debate. Recent accurate measurements of position, velocity, and metallicity provided by Tycho Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) and RAdial Velocity Experiments (RAVE) have revealed that the Hercules stream is most clearly seen in the metal-rich region ([Fe/H] > 0), while it is not clearly seen in lower metallicity region ([Fe/H] < -0.25). By using a large number of chemo-dynamical 2D test-particle simulations with a rotating bar and/or spiral arms, we find that the obser…
Gaia Data Release 2 revealed detailed structures of nearby stars in phase space. These include the Hercules stream, whose origin is still debated. Most of the previous numerical studies conjectured that the observed structures originate from orbits in resonance with the bar, based on static potential models for the Milky Way. We, in contrast, approach the problem via a self-consistent, dynamic, and morphologically well-resolved model, namely a full $N$-body simulation of the Milky Way. Our simulation comprises about 5.1 billion particles in the galactic stellar bulge, bar, disk, and dark-matte…
There are multiple groups of comoving stars in the Solar neighbourhood, which can potentially be explained as the signatures of one of the fundamental resonances of non-axisymmetric structure such as the Galactic bar or spiral arms. One such stream, Hercules, has been proposed to result from the outer Lindblad resonance (OLR) of a short fast rotating bar as shown analytically, or the corotation resonance (CR) of a longer slower rotating bar as observed in an N-body model. We show that by including an m = 4 Fourier component in an analytical long bar model, with an amplitude that is typical for…
We propose a novel explanation for the Hercules stream consistent with recent measurements of the extent and pattern speed of the Galactic bar. We have adapted a made-to-measure dynamical model tailored for the Milky Way to investigate the kinematics of the solar neighborhood (SNd). The model matches the 3D density of the red clump giant stars (RCGs) in the bulge and bar as well as stellar kinematics in the inner Galaxy, with a pattern speed of 39 km s$^{-1}$ kpc$^{-1}$. Cross-matching this model with the $Gaia$ DR1 TGAS data combined with RAVE and LAMOST radial velocities, we find that the mo…
It has been proposed that the Hercules stream, a group of co-moving stars in the Solar neighborhood offset from the bulk of the velocity distribution, is the result of resonant interactions between stars in the outer disk and the Galactic bar. So far it has only been seen in the immediate Solar neighborhood, but the resonance model makes a prediction over a large fraction of the Galactic disk. I predict the distribution of stellar velocities and the changing Hercules feature in this distribution as a function of location in the Galactic disk in a simple model for the Galaxy and the bar that pr…
About 20% of stars in the solar vicinity are in the Hercules stream, a bundle of stars that move together with a velocity distinct from the Sun. Its origin is still uncertain. Here, we explore the possibility that Hercules is made of trojans, stars captured at L4, one the Lagrangian points of the stellar bar. Using GALAKOS--a high-resolution N-body simulation of the Galactic disk--we follow the motions of stars in the co-rotating frame of the bar and confirm previous studies on Hercules being formed by stars in co-rotation resonance with the bar. Unlike previous work, we demonstrate that the r…
Dynamical Origins of Azimuthal Metallicity Variations in the Galactic Disk: Insights from Kinematic Ridges with Gaia
The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；University of Surrey（萨里大学）；Flatiron Institute（平顿研究所）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）
The aim of this work is to contribute to the understanding of the stellar velocity distribution in the solar neighborhood (SN). We propose that the structures on the $U-V$ planes, known as the moving groups, can be mainly explained by the spiral arms perturbations. The applied model of the Galactic disk and spiral arms, with the parameters defined by observational data and with pattern speed $Ω_p=$28.0 km s$^{-1}$ kpc$^{-1}$, is the same that allowed us to explain the origin of the Local Arm and the Sun's orbit trapped inside the corotation resonance (CR). We show that the $U-V$ picture of the…
The Milky Way disk exhibits intricate orbit substructure of still-debated dynamical origin. The angle variables $(θ_ϕ,θ_R)$ -- which are conjugates to the actions $(L_z,J_R)$, and describe a star's location along its orbit -- are a powerful diagnostic to identify $l$:$m$ resonances via the orbit shape relation $Δθ_R / Δθ_ϕ= -m/l$. In the past, angle signatures have been hidden by survey selection effects (SEs). Using test particle simulations of a barred galaxy, we demonstrate that \emph{Gaia} should allow us to identify the Galactic bar's Outer Lindblad Resonance ($l=+1, m=2$, OLR) in angle s…
Gaia DR2 has delivered full-sky 6-D measurements for millions of stars, and the quest to understand the dynamics of our Galaxy has entered a new phase. Our aim is to reveal and characterize the kinematic sub-structure of the different Galactic neighbourhoods, to form a picture of their spatial evolution that can be used to infer the Galactic potential, its evolution and its components. We take ~5 million stars in the Galactic disk from the Gaia DR2 catalogue and build the velocity distribution of many different Galactic Neighbourhoods distributed along 5 kpc in Galactic radius and azimuth. We …
The second data release from ESA's Gaia mission has revealed many ridge-like structures in the velocity distribution of the Milky Way. We show that these can arise naturally from winding transient spiral structure that is commonly seen in N-body simulations of disk galaxies. We construct test particle models of the winding spiral structure, and compare the resulting distribution of orbits with the observed two-dimensional velocity distribution in the extended solar neighbourhood and with the distribution of rotational velocities over 8 kpc along the Sun--Galactic-centre--Galactic anti-centre l…
We use the $Gaia$ DR2 RR Lyrae sample to gain an uninterrupted view of the Galactic stellar halo. We dissect the available volume in slices parallel to the Milky Way's disc to show that within $\sim30$ kpc from the Galactic centre the halo is triaxial, with the longest axis misaligned by $\sim70^{\circ}$ with respect to the Galactic $x$-axis. This anatomical procedure exposes two large diffuse over-densities aligned with the semi-major axis of the halo: the Hercules-Aquila Cloud and the Virgo Over-density. We reveal the kinematics of the entire inner halo by mapping out the amplitudes and dire…
We explore the origin of phase-space substructures revealed by the second Gaia data release in the disc of the Milky Way, such as the ridges in the $V_ϕ$-$r$ plane, the undulations in the $V_ϕ$-$r$-$V_r$ space and the streams in the $V_ϕ$-$V_r$ plane. We use a collisionless N-body simulation with co-spatial thin and thick discs, along with orbit integration, to study the orbital structure close to the Outer Lindblad Resonance (OLR) of the bar. We find that a prominent, long-lived ridge is formed in the $V_ϕ$-$r$ plane due to the OLR which translates to streams in the $V_ϕ$-$V_r$ plane and exam…
Non-axisymmetries in the Galactic potential (spiral arms and bar) induce kinematic groups such as the Hercules stream. Assuming that Hercules is caused by the effects of the Outer Lindblad Resonance of the Galactic bar, we model analytically its properties as a function of position in the Galaxy and its dependence on the bar's pattern speed and orientation. Using data from the RAVE survey we find that the azimuthal velocity of the Hercules structure decreases as a function of Galactocentric radius, in a manner consistent with our analytical model. This allows us to obtain new estimates of the …
We have investigated the distributions of stellar azimuthal and radial velocity components $V_Φ$ and $V_{R}$ in the vertical position-velocity plane $Z$-$V_{Z}$ across the Galactic disc of $6.34 \lesssim R \lesssim 12.34$\,kpc and $|Φ| \lesssim 7.5^{\circ}$ using a Gaia and Gaia-LAMOST sample of stars. As found in previous works, the distributions exhibit significant spiral patterns. The $V_{R}$ distributions also show clear quadrupole patterns, which are the consequence of the well-known tilt of the velocity ellipsoid. The observed spiral and quadrupole patterns in the phase space plane vary …
We use Gaia DR2 astrometric and line-of-sight velocity information combined with two sets of distances obtained with a Bayesian inference method to study the 3D velocity distribution in the Milky Way disc. We search for variations in all Galactocentric cylindrical velocity components ($V_ϕ$, $V_R$ and $V_z$) with Galactic radius, azimuth, and distance from the disc mid-plane. We confirm recent work showing that bulk vertical motions in the $R\text{-}z$ plane are consistent with a combination of breathing and bending modes. In the $x\text{-}y$ plane, we show that, although the amplitudes change…
Using of a new N-body simulation, as well as Gaia DR2/EDR3 data complemented by data from the Galah, APOGEE, LAMOST surveys, we explore the possible link between the MW spiral arms, RVphi-ridges and moving groups in local UV space. We show that the tightly wound main spiral arms in the N-body model can be successfully identified using overdensities in angular momentum (AM) or guiding space, as well as in the distribution of dynamically cold stars close to their guiding centers. Stars in the AM overdensities that travel over many kpc in radius trace extended density ridges in RVphi space and ov…
We use the proper motions (PM) of half a million red giant stars in Large Magellanic Cloud measured by Gaia to construct a 2d kinematic map of mean PM and its dispersion across the galaxy, out to 7 Kpc from its centre. We then explore a range of dynamical models and measure the rotation curve, mean azimuthal velocity, velocity dispersion profiles, and the orientation of the galaxy. We find that the circular velocity reaches 90 km/s at 5 Kpc, and that the velocity dispersion ranges from 30-40 km/s in the galaxy centre to 15-20 km/s at 7 Kpc.
We present the first detailed study of the behaviour of the stellar proper motion across the entire Galactic Anti-centre area visible in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. We use recalibrated SDSS astrometry in combination with positions from {\it Gaia} DR1 to provide tangential motion measurements with a systematic uncertainty $<$5 kms$^{-1}$ for the Main Sequence stars at the distance of the Monoceros Ring. We demonstrate that Monoceros members rotate around the Galaxy with azimuthal speeds of ~230 kms$^{-1}$, only slightly lower than that of the Sun. Additionally, both vertical and azimutha…
CONTEXT. The Gaia Collaboration has used Gaia-DR2 sources with six-dimensional (6D) phase space information to derive kinematical maps within 5 kpc of the Sun, which is a reachable range for stars with relative error in distance lower than 20%. AIMS. Here we aim to extend the range of distances by a factor of two to three, thus adding the range of Galactocentric distances between 13 kpc and 20 kpc to the previous maps, with their corresponding error and root mean square values. METHODS. We make use of the whole sample of stars of Gaia-DR2 including radial velocity measurements, which consists …
We study a set of solar neighborhood ($d < 3$ kpc) stars from Gaia Data Release 2 to determine azimuthal star count differences, i.e., left and right of the line from the Galactic center through the sun - and compare these differences north and south. In this companion paper to Gardner et al. (2020), we delineate our procedures to remove false asymmetries from sampling effects, incompleteness, and/or interloper populations, as this is crucial to tests of axisymmetry. Particularly, we have taken care to make appropriate selections of magnitude, color, in-plane Galactocentric radius and Galactic…
We present a newly found wave--like pattern in mean Galactocentric radial velocity U_g vs. guiding centre radius R_g or angular momentum L_z of stars in the RV subsample of Gaia DR2. The short-wave pattern has a wavelength of order 1.2 kpc in R_g or 285 kpc km/s in L_z. The pattern shows only weak changes with Galactocentric radius R and little change in strength in particular with the vertical energy E_z of the stars or respectively the distance to the Galactic plane |z|. The pattern is to first order symmetric around the plane, i.e. has no significant odd terms in z. There is weak phase shif…
A model of the Galaxy with the outer ring R1R2 can explain the observed distribution of the radial, VR, and azimuthal, VT, velocity components along the Galactocentric distance, R, derived from the Gaia EDR3 data. We selected stars from the Gaia EDR3 catalogue with reliable parallaxes, proper motions and line-of-sight velocities lying near the Galactic plane, |z|<200 pc, and in the sector of the Galactocentic angles |theta|<15 degrees and calculated the median velocities VR and VT in small bins along the distance R. The distribution of observed velocities appears to have some specific features…
The Galactic disk exhibits complex chemical and dynamical substructure thought to be induced by the bar, spiral arms, and satellites. Here, we explore the chemical signatures of bar resonances in action and velocity space and characterize the differences between the signatures of corotation and higher-order resonances using test particle simulations. Thanks to recent surveys, we now have large datasets containing metallicities and kinematics of stars outside the solar neighborhood. We compare the simulations to the observational data from Gaia EDR3 and LAMOST DR5 and find weak evidence for a s…
Using a sample of nearly 140,000 red clump stars selected from the LAMOST and Gaia Galactic surveys, we have mapped mean vertical velocity $\overline{V_{z}}$ in the $X$-$Y$ plane for a large volume of the Galactic disk (6 $< R < 16$ kpc; $-20 <ϕ< 50^{\circ}$; $|Z| < 1$ kpc). A clear signature where $\overline{V_{z}}$ increases with $R$ is detected for the chemically thin disk. The signature for the thick disk is however not significant, in line with the hot nature of this disk component. For the thin disk, the warp signature shows significant variations in both radial and azimuthal directions,…
We identify substructures of the Galactic halo using 3,003 type $ab$ RR Lyraes (RRab) with 6D position-velocity information from the SDSS, LAMOST, and Gaia EDR3. Based on the information, we define the separation of any two of the stars in the integrals of motion space and identify substructures by utilizing the friends-of-friends algorithm. We identify members belonging to several known substructures: the Sagittarius stream, the Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage (GES), the Sequoia, and the Helmi streams. In addition to these known substructures, there are three other substructures possibly associated wi…
Super metal-rich (SMR) stars in the solar neighborhood are thought to be born in the inner disk and came to present location by radial migration, which is most intense at the co-rotation resonance (CR) of the Galactic bar. In this work, we show evidence for the CR origin of SMR stars in LAMOST-Gaia by detecting six ridges and undulations in the phi versus Lz space coded by median VR, following a similar slope of -8 km/s kpc/deg. The slope is predicted by Monario et al.'s model for CR of a large and slow Galactic bar. For the first time, we show the variation of angular momentum with azimuths f…
The present paper is the culminating one of a series aimed to contribute to the understanding of the kinematic structures of the solar neighbourhood (SN), explaining the origin of the Local Arm and relating the moving groups with the spiral-arms resonances in the disk. With a model for the Galactic potential, with the Sun inside the spiral corotation resonance (CR), we integrate the 2D orbits of test particles distributed in birthplaces along the main spiral arms, the Local Arm, and in the axisymmetric disk. A comparison of the resulting U-V plane of the SN with that provided by Gaia DR2 confi…
The perturbation mechanism of the Galactic disk has puzzled us for a long time. The imprints from perturbations provide important diagnostics on the disk formation and evolution. Here we try to constrain when the vertical perturbation took place in the disk by tracking the phase mixing history. Firstly, we clearly depict the spiral structures of radial ($v_R$) and azimuthal ($v_ϕ$) velocities in the phase space of the vertical position and velocity ($z$-$v_z$) with 723,871 LAMOST-Gaia combined stars. Then, we investigate the variation of the spirals with stellar age ($τ$) by dividing the sampl…
We apply a simple axisymmetric disc model to 218 Galactic Cepheids whose accurate measurements of the distance and velocities are obtained by cross-matching an existing Cepheids catalogue with the Gaia DR2 data. Our model fit determines the "local centrifugal speed", $V_\mathrm{c}$ $-$ defined as the rotation speed required to balance the local radial gravitational force $-$ at the Sun's location to be $V_{c}(R_0)=236\pm 3$ km s$^{-1}$ and the Sun's azimuthal and radial peculiar motions to be $V_{\odot}=12.4\pm0.7$ km s$^{-1}$ and $U_{\odot}=7.7\pm0.9$ km s$^{-1}$, respectively. These results …
The Kepler telescope has discovered over 4,000 planets (candidates) by searching ? 200,000 stars over a wide range of distance (order of kpc) in our Galaxy. Characterizing the kinematic properties (e.g., Galactic component membership and kinematic age) of these Kepler targets (including the planet (candidate) hosts) is the first step towards studying Kepler planets in the Galactic context, which will reveal fresh insights into planet formation and evolution. In this paper, the second part of the Planets Across the Space and Time (PAST) series, by combining the data from LAMOST and Gaia and the…
By combining LAMOST DR4 and Gaia DR2 common red clump stars with age and proper motion, we analyze the amplitude evolution of the stellar warp independently of any assumption with a simple model. The greatest height of the warp disk increases with Galactocentric distance in different populations and it is dependent on the age: the younger stellar populations exhibit stronger warp features than the old ones, accompanied with the warp amplitude $γ({\rm age})$ decreasing with age and its first derivative $\dotγ ({\rm age})$ is different from zero. The azimuth of line of nodes $ϕ_w$ is stable at $…
To illustrate the potential of GDR2, we provide a first look at the kinematics of the Milky Way disc, within a radius of several kiloparsecs around the Sun. We benefit for the first time from a sample of 6.4 million F-G-K stars with full 6D phase-space coordinates, precise parallaxes, and precise Galactic cylindrical velocities . From this sample, we extracted a sub-sample of 3.2 million giant stars to map the velocity field of the Galactic disc from $\sim$5~kpc to $\sim$13~kpc from the Galactic centre and up to 2~kpc above and below the plane. We also study the distribution of 0.3 million sol…
We investigate the three-dimensional asymmetrical kinematics and present time stamps of the Milky Way disk between Galactocentric distances of $R=12$ and 15 \,kpc, using red clump stars selected from the LAMOST Galactic survey, also with proper motion measurements provided by the Gaia DR2. We discover velocity substructure above the Galactic plane corresponding to a density dip found recently ("south-middle opposite" density structure[R $\sim$ 12-15 \,kpc, Z $\sim$ 1.5 \,kpc] discovered in \citet{Wang2018b, Wang2018c}) in the radial and azimuthal velocity. For the vertical velocity, we detect …
The second data release of the Gaia mission has revealed a very rich structure in local velocity space. In terms of in-plane motions, this rich structure is also seen as multiple ridges in the actions of the axisymmetric background potential of the Galaxy. These ridges are probably related to a combination of effects from ongoing phase-mixing and resonances from the spiral arms and the bar. We have recently developed a method to capture the behaviour of the stellar phase-space distribution function at a resonance, by re-expressing it in terms of a new set of canonical actions and angles variab…
The effects in the local U-V velocity field due to orbital trapping by bar resonances have been studied computing fifteen resonant families in a non-axisymmetric Galactic potential, considering the bar's angular velocity between 35 and 57.5 ${\rm\,km\,s^{-1}{kpc}^{-1}}$. Only cases in the low, 37.5, 40 ${\rm\,km\,s^{-1}{kpc}^{-1}}$, and high, 55, 57.5 ${\rm\,km\,s^{-1}{kpc}^{-1}}$, velocity ranges give trapping structures that have some similarity with observed features in the velocity distribution. The resulting structures in the local U-V plane form resonant bands appearing at various levels…
We compare distance resolved, absolute proper motions in the Milky Way bar/bulge region to a grid of made-to-measure dynamical models with well defined pattern speeds. The data are obtained by combining the relative VVV Infrared Astrometric Catalog v1 proper motions with the Gaia DR2 absolute reference frame. We undertake a comprehensive analysis of the various errors in our comparison, from both the data and the models, and allow for additional, unknown, contributions by using an outlier-tolerant likelihood function to evaluate the best fitting model. We quantify systematic effects such as th…
The velocity distribution of stars is a sensitive probe of the gravitational potential of the Galaxy, and hence of its dark matter distribution. In particular, the shape of the dark halo (e.g. spherical, oblate, or prolate) determines velocity correlations, and different halo geometries are expected to result in measurable differences. Here we explore and interpret the correlations in the $(v_R, v_z)$-velocity distribution as a function of position in the Milky Way. We selected a high-quality sample of stars from the Gaia DR2 catalogue and characterised the orientation of the velocity distribu…
Taking advantage of the recent Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3), we map chemical inhomogeneities in the Milky Way's disc out to a distance of $\sim$ 4 kpc from the Sun, using different samples of bright giant stars. The samples are selected using effective temperatures and surface gravities from the GSP-Spec module, and are expected to trace stellar populations of different typical age. The cool (old) giants exhibit a relatively smooth radial metallicity gradient with an azimuthal dependence. Binning in Galactic azimuth $ϕ$, the slope gradually varies from $d$[M/H]$/dR \sim -0.054$ dex kpc$^{-1}$ at …
AIMS. We calculate the stellar density using star counts obtained from Gaia DR2 up to a Galactocentric distance R=20 kpc with a deconvolution technique for the parallax errors. Then we analyse the density in order to study the structure of the outer Galactic disc, mainly the warp. METHODS. In order to carry out the deconvolution, we used the Lucy inversion technique for recovering the corrected star counts. We also used the Gaia luminosity function of stars with $M_G<10$ to extract the stellar density from the star counts. RESULTS. The stellar density maps can be fitted by an exponential disc …
We have applied our method for weighing the Galactic disk using phase-space spirals to the Gaia EDR3 proper motion sample. For stars in distant regions of the Galactic disk, the latitudinal proper motion has a close projection with vertical velocity, such that the phase-space spiral in the plane of vertical position and vertical velocity can be observed without requiring that all stars have available radial velocity information. We divided the Galactic plane into 360 separate data samples, each corresponding to an area cell in the Galactic plane in the distance range of 1.4-3.4 kpc, with an ap…
We present the age-velocity dispersion relation (AVR) in three dimensions in the solar neighbourhood using 3,564 commonly observed sub-giant/red-giant branch stars selected from LAMOST, which gives the age and radial velocity, and \emph{Gaia}, which measures the distance and proper motion. The stars are separated into metal-poor (${\rm [Fe/H]<-0.2}$\,dex and metal-rich (${\rm [Fe/H]>-0.2}$\,dex) groups, so that the metal-rich stars are mostly $α$-poor, while the metal-poor group are mostly contributed by $α$-enhanced stars. Thus, the old and metal-poor stars likely belong to the chemically def…
We apply the vertical Jeans equation to the kinematics of Milky Way stars in the solar neighbourhood to measure the local dark matter density. More than 90,000 G- and K-type dwarf stars are selected from the cross-matched sample of LAMOST DR5 and Gaia DR2 for our analyses. The mass models applied consist of a single exponential stellar disc, a razor thin gas disc and a constant dark matter density. We first consider the simplified vertical Jeans equation which ignores the tilt term and assumes a flat rotation curve. Under a Gaussian prior on the total stellar surface density, the local dark ma…
Aiming at discriminating different gravitational potential models of the Milky Way, we perform tests based on the kinematic data powered by the Gaia DR2 astrometry, over a large range of $(R,z)$ locations. Invoking the complete form of Jeans equations that admit three integrals of motion, we use the independent $R$- and $z$-directional equations as two discriminators ($T_R$ and $T_z$). We apply the formula for spatial distributions of radial and vertical velocity dispersions proposed by Binney et al., and successfully extend it to azimuthal components, $σ_θ(R,z)$ and $V_θ(R,z)$; the analytic f…
Context. The physical processes driving the formation of Galactic spiral arms are still under debate. Studies using open clusters favour the description of the Milky Way spiral arms as long-lived structures following the classical density wave theory. Current studies comparing the Gaia DR2 field stars kinematic information of the Solar neighbourhood to simulations, find a better agreement with short-lived arms with a transient behaviour. Aims. Our aim is to provide an observational, data-driven view of the Milky Way spiral structure and its dynamics using open clusters as the main tracers, and…
Recent statistical deconvolution methods have produced extended kinematical maps in a range of heliocentric distances that are a factor of two to three larger than those analysed in the Gaia Collaboration based on the same data. In this paper, we use such maps to derive the rotation curve both in the Galactic plane and in off-plane regions and to analyse the density distribution. By assuming stationary equilibrium and axisymmetry, we used the Jeans equation to derive the rotation curve. Then we fit it with density models that include both dark matter and predictions of the MOND (Modified Newto…
Gravitational 3-body interaction among binary stars and the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of the Milky Way occasionally ejects a hypervelocity star (HVS) with a velocity of ~1000 km/s. Due to the ejection location, such a HVS initially has negligible azimuthal angular momentum Lz ~ 0 kpc km/s. Even if the halo is mildly triaxial, Lz of a recently ejected nearby HVS remains negligible, since its flight time from the Galactic Center is too short to accumulate noticeable torque. However, if we make a wrong assumption about the Solar position and velocity, such a HVS would apparentl…
Mapping the Galactic disk with the LAMOST and Gaia Red clump sample: VIII: Mapping the kinematics of the Galactic disk using mono-age and mono-abundance stellar populations
