Since chemical abundances are inherited between generations of stars, we use them to trace the evolutionary history of our Galaxy. We present a robust methodology for creating a phylogenetic tree, a biological tool used for centuries to study heritability. Combining our phylogeny with information on stellar ages and dynamical properties, we reconstruct the shared history of 78 stars in the Solar Neighbourhood. The branching pattern in our tree supports a scenario in which the thick disk is an ancestral population of the thin disk. The transition from thick to thin disk shows an anomaly, which we attribute to a star formation burst. Our tree shows a further signature of the variability in stars similar to the Sun, perhaps linked to a minor star formation enhancement creating our Solar System. In this paper, we demonstrate the immense potential of a phylogenetic perspective and interdisciplinary collaboration, where with borrowed techniques from biology we can study key processes that have contributed to the evolution of the Milky Way.
We use a sample of 938 red clump giant stars located in the direction of the galactic long bar to study the chemistry of Milky Way bar stars. Kinematically separating stars on bar orbits from stars with inner disc orbits, we find that stars on bar-like orbits are more metal rich with a mean iron abundance of <[Fe/H]>=+0.30 compared to <[Fe/H]>=+0.03 for the inner disc. Spatially selecting bar stars is complicated by a strong vertical metallicity gradient of -1.1dex/kpc, but we find the metallicity distribution varies in a manner consistent with our orbital selection. Our results have two possi…
Being one of the most abundant atomic/molecular species observed in dense molecular gas, atomic carbon ($\mathrm{C}^0$) is a potential good tracer of molecular gas mass in many chemical/physical environments, though the $\mathrm{C^0}$ abundance variation outside the Galactic disk region is yet to be fully known. This paper presents a wide-field 500 GHz [CI] map of the Galactic central molecular zone (CMZ) obtained with the ASTE 10-m telescope. Principal component analysis and non-LTE multi-transition analysis have shown that the [CI] emission predominantly originates from the low-excitation ga…
We calculate the ages, orbits and phase-space coordinates for a sample of $\sim$4 million LAMOST and Gaia stars. The ages are crossmatched and compared with values from two other popular age catalogs which derive the ages using different methods. Of these $\sim$4 million stars, we select a sample of 1.3 million stars and investigate their radial metallicity gradients (as determined by orbital radii) as a function of their ages. This analysis is performed on various subsets of the data split by chemistry and orbital parameters. We find that commonly used selections for ``thin disk'' stars (such…
We use the extensive $Gaia$ Data Release 2 set of Long Period Variables to select a sample of Oxygen-rich Miras throughout the Milky Way disk and bulge for study. Exploiting the relation between Mira pulsation period and stellar age/chemistry, we slice the stellar density of the Galactic disk and bulge as a function of period. We find the morphology of both components evolves as a function of stellar age/chemistry with the stellar disk being stubby at old ages, becoming progressively thinner and more radially extended at younger stellar ages, consistent with the picture of inside-out and upsid…
The internal kinematics and chemistry of 20 Milky Way strings
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova（意大利国家天体物理研究所帕多瓦天文台）；INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania（意大利国家天体物理研究所卡塔尼亚天文台）；INAF - Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna（意大利国家天体物理研究所博洛尼亚天文与空间科学观测站）；INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma（意大利国家天体物理研究所罗马天文台）；Fundación Galileo Galilei – INAF（伽利略基金会-意大利国家天体物理研究所）；INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri（意大利国家天体物理研究所阿切尔菲天文台）
The Milky Way's progenitor experienced several merger events which left their imprints on the stellar halo, including the Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus. Recently, it has been proposed that this event perturbed the proto-disk and gave rise to a metal rich ([Fe/H] $>-1$) low angular momentum ($v_ϕ < 100$ km/s) stellar population. These stars have dynamical and chemical properties different from the accreted stellar halo, but are continuous with the canonical thick disk. In this letter, we use a hydrodynamical simulation of an isolated galaxy which develops clumps that produce a bimodal thin$+$thick dis…
The chemodynamical memory of a major merger in a NIHAO-UHD Milky Way analogue -- II. Were Splash stars heated or already born hot?
Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学天文与天体物理研究学院）；Universität Heidelberg, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Wissenschaftliches Rechnen（海德堡大学跨学科科学计算中心）；Universität Heidelberg, Zentrum für Astronomie, Institut für Theoretische Astrophysik（海德堡大学天文学中心理论天体物理研究所）；Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Universitá degli Studi di Firenze（佛罗伦萨大学物理与天文学系）；The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science（卡内基科学机构天文台）；Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学天文学研究所）；Department of Astronomy, New Mexico State University（新墨西哥州立大学天文学系）
Using synthetic emission maps to constrain the structure of the Milky Way
介绍了银河系结构研究的现状。我们使用光滑粒子流体动力学（SPH）模拟ISM气体在银河系中的影响下的一些不同的引力势代表的旋臂和核酒吧，固定和随时间变化。气体经过ISM冷却和化学处理，使我们能够跟踪CO和HI密度。我们使用一个三维网格为基础的辐射转移代码来模拟从SPH输出的排放，允许从地球上看合成的光速地图的建设。通过将这些图与银河系中观测到的CO和HI发射进行比较（Dame et al. 2001，Kalberla et al. 2005），我们可以推断出最适合我们银河系的臂/棒几何形状。通过这样做，我们的目标是回答有关银河系形态的关键问题，如旋臂的数量，条和臂的模式速度，臂的俯仰角和条的形状
We present a chemodynamical analysis of 11,562 metal-rich, high-eccentricity halo-like main-sequence (MS) stars, which has been referred to as the Splash or Splashed Disk, selected from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST). When divided into two groups, a low-[$α$/Fe] population (LAP) and a high-[$α$/Fe] population (HAP), based on kinematics and chemistry, we find that they exhibit very distinct properties, indicative of different origins. From a detailed analysis of their orbital inclinations, we suggest that the HAP arises fro…
Galactic haloes in a $Λ$-CDM universe are predicted to host today a swarm of debris resulting from cannibalised dwarf galaxies. The chemo-dynamical information recorded in their stellar populations helps elucidate their nature, constraining the assembly history of the Galaxy. Using data from APOGEE and \textit{Gaia}, we examine the chemical properties of various halo substructures, considering elements that sample various nucleosynthetic pathways. The systems studied are Heracles, \textit{Gaia}-Enceladus/Sausage (GES), the Helmi stream, Sequoia, Thamnos, Aleph, LMS-1, Arjuna, I'itoi, Nyx, Icar…
Early-type dwarfs (ETDs) are the end points of the evolution of low-mass galaxies whose gas supply has been extinguished. The cessation of star-formation lays bare the ancient stellar populations. A wealth of information is stored in the colours, magnitudes, metallicities and abundances of resolved stars of the dwarf spheroidal and ultra-faint galaxies around the Milky Way, allowing their chemistry and stellar populations to be studied in great detail. Here, we summarize our current understanding, which has advanced rapidly over the last decade thanks to the flourishing of large-scale astromet…
The Milky Way in context: The formation of galactic discs and chemical sequences from a cosmological perspective
Universitat de Barcelona（巴塞罗那大学）；Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, CY Cergy Paris Université, CNRS（巴黎天文台，PSL大学，索邦大学，巴黎西岱大学，CY塞尔吉巴黎大学，法国国家科学研究中心）；Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, The University of Tokyo（东京大学 Kavli宇宙粒子与宇宙学研究所（WPI），UTIAS）；Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik（马克斯·普朗克天体物理研究所）；Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University（利物浦约翰摩尔斯大学天体物理研究所）
Chemical tagging has great promise as a technique to unveil our Galaxy's history. Grouping stars based on their similar chemistry can establish details of the star formation and merger history of the Milky Way. With precise measurements of stellar chemistry, chemical tagging may be able to group together stars born from the same gas cloud, regardless of their current positions and kinematics. Successfully tagging these birth clusters requires high quality chemical space information and a good cluster-finding algorithm. To test the feasibility of chemical tagging on data from current and upcomi…
The chemodynamical memory of a major merger in a NIHAO-UHD Milky Way analogue -- I. A golden thread through time and space
Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学）；Universität Heidelberg（海德堡大学）；Universitá degli Studi di Firenze（佛罗伦萨大学）；The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science（卡内基科学研究所天文台）；Northwestern University（西北大学）；New Mexico State University（新墨西哥州立大学）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）
The assembly process of our Galaxy can be retrieved using the motions and chemistry of individual stars. Chemo-dynamical studies of the nearby halo have long hinted at the presence of multiple components such as streams, clumps, duality and correlations between the stars' chemical abundances and orbital parameters. More recently, the analysis of two large stellar surveys have revealed the presence of a well-populated chemical elemental abundance sequence, of two distinct sequences in the colour-magnitude diagram, and of a prominent slightly retrograde kinematic structure all in the nearby halo…
The mechanisms of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way are encoded in the orbits, chemistry and ages of its stars. With the 4MOST MIlky way Disk And BuLgE Low-Resolution Survey (4MIDABLE-LR) we aim to study kinematic and chemical substructures in the Milky Way disc and bulge region with samples of unprecedented size out to larger distances and greater precision than conceivable with Gaia alone or any other ongoing or planned survey. Gaia gives us the unique opportunity for target selection based almost entirely on parallax and magnitude range, hence increasing the efficiency in samplin…
The Milky Way is a unique laboratory, where stellar properties can be measured and analyzed in detail. In particular, stars in the older populations encode information on the mechanisms that led to the formation of our Galaxy. In this article, we analyze the kinematics, spatial distribution, and chemistry of a large number of stars in the Solar Neighborhood, where all of the main Galactic components are well-represented. We find that the thick disk comprises two distinct and overlapping stellar populations, with different kinematic properties and chemical compositions. The metal-weak thick dis…
We present models of CO(1-0) emission from Milky Way-mass galaxies at redshift zero in the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations. We calculate the molecular abundances by post-processing the simulations with an equilibrium chemistry solver while accounting for the effects of local sources, and determine the emergent CO(1-0) emission using a line radiative transfer code. We find that the results depend strongly on the shielding length assumed, which in our models sets the attenuation of the incident UV radiation field. At the resolution of these simulations, commonly used choices for the shie…
We identify and characterise a Milky Way-like realisation from the Auriga simulations with two consecutive massive mergers $\sim2\,$Gyr apart at high redshift, comparable to the reported Kraken and Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus. The Kraken-like merger ($z=1.6$, $M_{\rm Tot} = 8\times10^{10}\,$M$_{\odot}$) is gas-rich, deposits most of its mass in the inner $10\,$kpc, and is largely isotropic. The Sausage-like merger ($z=1.14$, $M_{\rm Tot} = 1\times10^{11}\,$M$_{\odot}$) leaves a more extended mass distribution at higher energies, and has a radially anisotropic distribution. For the higher redshift m…
Interstellar chemistry is important for galaxy formation, as it determines the rate at which gas can cool, and enables us to make predictions for observable spectroscopic lines from ions and molecules. We explore two central aspects of modelling the chemistry of the interstellar medium (ISM): (1) the effects of local stellar radiation, which ionises and heats the gas, and (2) the depletion of metals onto dust grains, which reduces the abundance of metals in the gas phase. We run high-resolution (400 M$_\odot$ per baryonic particle) simulations of isolated disc galaxies, from dwarfs to Milky Wa…
Universidade de São Paulo（圣保罗大学）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Observatório Nacional, MCTI（巴西国家天文台）；University of Lancashire（兰开夏大学）；Queen’s University（女王大学）
OCCAM X. Neutron Capture Abundances with Keck/HIRES & Magellan/MIKE
Texas Christian University（德克萨斯基督教大学）；Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer, Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope（莫纳克亚光谱仪巡天，加拿大法国夏威夷望远镜）；Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab（吉米尼天文台/美国国家科学基金会NOIR实验室）；The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science（卡内基科学促进会天文台）；University of California, Merced（加州大学默塞德分校）；The University of Texas at Austin（得克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）
We examine the role of the large-scale galactic-dynamical environment in setting the properties of giant molecular clouds in Milky Way-like galaxies. We perform three high-resolution simulations of Milky Way-like discs with the moving-mesh hydrodynamics code Arepo, yielding a statistical sample of $\sim 80,000$ giant molecular clouds and $\sim 55,000$ HI clouds. We account for the self-gravity of the gas, momentum and thermal energy injection from supernovae and HII regions, mass injection from stellar winds, and the non-equilibrium chemistry of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. By varying the exte…
Large stellar surveys are revealing the chemodynamical structure of the Galaxy across a vast spatial extent. However, the many millions of low-resolution spectra observed to date are yet to be fully exploited. We employ The Cannon, a data-driven approach to estimating abundances, to obtain detailed abundances from low-resolution (R = 1800) LAMOST spectra, using the GALAH survey as our reference. We deliver five (for dwarfs) or six (for giants) estimated abundances representing five different nucleosynthetic channels, for 3.9 million stars, to a precision of 0.05 - 0.23 dex. Using wide binary p…
We present the first high-resolution chemical abundances of seven stars in the recently discovered high-energy stream Typhon. Typhon stars have apocenters >100 kpc, making this the first detailed chemical picture of the Milky Way's very distant stellar halo. Though the sample size is limited, we find that Typhon's chemical abundances are more like a dwarf galaxy than a globular cluster, showing a metallicity dispersion and no presence of multiple stellar populations. Typhon stars display enhanced $α$-element abundances and increasing r-process abundances with increasing metallicity. The high-$…
