One of the suggested thick disc formation mechanisms is that they were born quickly and in situ from a turbulent clumpy disc. Subsequently, thin discs formed slowly within them from leftovers of the turbulent phase and from material accreted through cold flows and minor mergers. In this letter, I propose an observational test to verify this hypothesis. By combining thick disc and total stellar masses of edge-on galaxies with galaxy stellar mass functions calculated in the redshift range of $z\leq3.0$, I derived a positive correlation between the age of the youngest stars in thick discs and the stellar mass of the host galaxy; galaxies with a present-day stellar mass of $\mathcal{M}_\star(z=0)<10^{10}\,\mathcal{M}_\odot$ have thick disc stars as young as $4-6\,{\rm Gyr}$, whereas the youngest stars in the thick discs of Milky-Way-like galaxies are $\sim10\,{\rm Gyr}$ old. I tested this prediction against the scarcely available thick disc age estimates, all of them are from galaxies with $\mathcal{M}_\star(z=0)\gtrsim10^{10}\,\mathcal{M}_\odot$, and I find that field spiral galaxies seem to follow the expectation. On the other hand, my derivation predicts ages that are too low for the thick discs in lenticular galaxies, indicating a fast early evolution for S0 galaxies. I propose the idea of conclusively testing whether thick discs formed quickly and in situ by obtaining the ages of thick discs in field galaxies with masses of $\mathcal{M}_\star(z=0)\sim10^{9.5}\,\mathcal{M}_\odot$ and by checking whether they contain $\sim5\,{\rm Gyr}$-old stars.
In the Milky Way, the thick disk can be defined using individual stellar abundances, kinematics, or age; or geometrically, as stars high above the mid-plane. In nearby galaxies, where only a geometric definition can be used, thick disks appear to have large radial scale-lengths, and their red colors suggest that they are uniformly old. The Milky Way's geometrically thick disk is also radially extended, but it is far from chemically uniform: alpha-enhanced stars are confined within the inner Galaxy. In simulated galaxies, where old stars are centrally concentrated, geometrically thick disks are…
Revisiting the Radial Metallicity Gradient-Age Relation in the Milky Way's Thin and Thick Disks
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；Tianjin Normal University（天津师范大学）
Using simulated galaxies in their cosmological context, we analyse how the flaring of mono-age populations (MAPs) influences the flaring and the age structure of geometrically-defined thick discs. We also explore under which circumstances the geometric thin and thick discs are meaningfully distinct components, or are part of a single continuous structure as in the Milky Way. We find that flat thick discs are created when MAPs barely flare or have low surface density at the radius where they start flaring. When looking at the vertical distribution of MAPs, these galaxies show a continuous thin/…
We analyze high quality abundances data of solar neighborhood stars and show that there are two distinct regimes of [alpha/Fe] versus age which we identify as the epochs of the thick and thin disk formation. A tight correlation between metallicity and [alpha/Fe] versus age is clearly identifiable on thick disk stars, implying that this population formed from a well mixed ISM, over a time scale of 4-5 Gyr. Thick disk stars vertical velocity dispersion correlate with age, with the youngest objects having as small scale heights as those of thin disk stars. A natural consequence of these two resul…
The Epoch of the GSE Merger: Insights from the Splash and Thick Disk Age Distributions
Peking University（北京大学）；Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University（北京大学科维理天文与天体物理研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）
We analyze the radial and vertical metallicity and [alpha/Fe] gradients of the disk stars of a disk galaxy simulated in a fully cosmological setting with the chemodynamical galaxy evolution code, GCD+. We study how the radial abundance gradients vary as a function of height above the plane and find that the metallicity ([alpha/Fe]) gradient becomes more positive (negative) with increasing height, changing sign around 1.5 kpc above the plane. At the largest vertical height (2 < |z| < 3 kpc), our simulated galaxy shows a positive radial metallicity gradient. We find that the positive metallicity…
We highlight some results from our detailed abundance analysis study of 703 kinematically selected F and G dwarf stars in the solar neighbourhood. The analysis is based on spectra of high-resolution (R=45000 to 110000) and high signal-to-noise (S/N=150 to 300). The main findings include: (1) at a given metallicity, the thick disk abundance trends are more $α$-enhanced than those of the thin disk; (2) the metal-rich limit of the thick disk reaches at least solar metallicities; (3) the metal-poor limit of the thin disk is around [Fe/H]=-0.8; (4) the thick disk shows an age-metallicity gradient; …
Previous studies based on the analysis of Gaia DR2 data have revealed that accreted stars, possibly originating from a single progenitor satellite, are a significant component of the halo of our Galaxy, potentially constituting most of the halo stars at $\rm [Fe/H] < -1$ within a few kpc from the Sun and beyond. In this paper, we couple astrometric data from Gaia DR2 with elemental abundances from APOGEE DR14 to characterize the kinematics and chemistry of in-situ and accreted populations up to $\rm [Fe/H] \sim -2$. Accreted stars appear to significantly impact the Galactic chemo-kinematic rel…
The Bulge is the least understood major stellar population of the Milky Way. Most of what we know about the formation and evolution of the Bulge comes from bright giant stars. The underlying assumption that giants represent all the stars, and accurately trace the chemical evolution of a stellar population, is under debate. In particular, recent observations of a few microlensed dwarf stars give a very different picture of the evolution of the Bulge from that given by the giant stars. [ABRIDGED] We perform a detailed elemental abundance analysis of dwarf stars in the Galactic bulge, based on hi…
We study the growth of stellar discs of Milky Way-sized galaxies using a suite of cosmological simulations. We calculate the half-mass axis lengths and axis ratios of stellar populations split by age in isolated galaxies with stellar mass $M_* = 10^7 - 10^{10} M_{\odot}$ at redshifts $z$ > 1.5. We find that in our simulations stars always form in relatively thin discs, and at ages below 100 Myr are contained within half-mass height $z_{1/2}$ ~ 0.1 kpc and short-to-long axis ratio $z_{1/2}/x_{1/2}$ ~ 0.15. Disc thickness increases with the age of stellar population, reaching median $z_{1/2}$ ~ …
Kinematic scaling of thin and thick discs from SAMI to NewHorizon
Yonsei University（延世大学）；CSIRO Space & Astronomy（澳大利亚联邦科学与工业研究组织空间与天文部）；Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学）；The University of Sydney（悉尼大学）；Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS and Sorbonne Université（巴黎天体物理研究所，法国国家科学研究中心和索邦大学）；Kyung Hee University（庆熙大学）
该研究利用 SAMI 星系和 NewHorizon 模拟数据，通过施瓦兹席尔德轨道叠加等方法，重新审视盘状恒星质量与速度弥散关系并扩展到薄厚盘，揭示了相关结果及系统误差，为未来研究盘状子结构提供方向。
We develop a Bayesian Machine Learning framework called BINGO (Bayesian INference for Galactic archaeOlogy) centred around a Bayesian neural network. After being trained on the APOGEE and \emph{Kepler} asteroseismic age data, BINGO is used to obtain precise relative stellar age estimates with uncertainties for the APOGEE stars. We carefully construct a training set to minimise bias and apply BINGO to a stellar population that is similar to our training set. We then select the 17,305 stars with ages from BINGO and reliable kinematic properties obtained from \textit{Gaia} DR2. By combining the a…
We perform controlled N-body simulations of disc galaxies growing within live dark matter (DM) haloes to present-day galaxies that contain both thin and thick discs. We consider two types of models: a) thick-disc initial conditions to which stars on near-circular orbits are continuously added over ~10 Gyr and b) models in which the birth velocity dispersion of stars decreases continuously over the same time-scale. We show that both schemes produce double-exponential vertical profiles similar to that of the Milky Way (MW). We indicate how the spatial age structure of galaxies can be used to dis…
Oxygen and carbon are important elements in stellar populations. Their behavior refers to the formation history of the stellar populations. C and O abundances would also obviously influence stellar opacities and the overall metal abundance $Z$. With observed high-quality spectroscopic properties, we construct stellar models with C and O elements, to give more accurate ages for 70 metal-poor dwarfs, which have been determined to be high-$α$ halo, low-$α$ halo and thick-disk stars. Our results show that high-$α$ halo stars are relatively older than low-$α$ halo stars by around 2.0 Gyr. The thick…
We study seven simulated disc galaxies, three with a quiescent merger history, and four with mergers in their last 9 Gyr of evolution. We compare their structure at z=0 by decomposing them into "mono-age populations" (MAPs) of stars within 500 Myr age bins. All studied galaxies undergo a phase of merging activity at high redshift, so that stars older than 9 Gyr are found in a centrally concentrated component, while younger stars are mostly found in discs. We find that most MAPs have simple exponential radial and vertical density profiles, with a scale-height that typically increases with age. …
We investigate thin and thick stellar disc formation in Milky-Way-mass galaxies using twelve FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations. All simulated galaxies experience an early period of bursty star formation that transitions to a late-time steady phase of near-constant star formation. Stars formed during the late-time steady phase have more circular orbits and thin-disc-like morphology at $z=0$, whilst stars born during the bursty phase have more radial orbits and thick-disc structure. The median age of thick-disc stars at $z=0$ correlates strongly with this transition time. We also find that…
We use oxygen and argon abundances for planetary nebulae (PNe) with low internal extinction (progenitor ages of (>4.5 Gyr) and high extinction (progenitor ages <2.5 Gyr), as well as those of the H II regions, to constrain the chemical enrichment and star formation efficiency in the thin and thicker discs of M31. The argon element is produced in larger fraction by Type Ia supernovae (SNe) than oxygen. We find that the mean log(O/Ar) values of PNe as a function of their argon abundances, 12 + log(Ar/H), trace the inter-stellar matter (ISM) conditions at the time of birth of the M 31 disc PN prog…
We investigate the properties of the double sequences of the Milky Way discs visible in the [$α$/Fe] vs [Fe/H] diagram. In the framework of Galactic formation and evolution, we discuss the complex relationships between age, metallicity, [$α$/Fe], and the velocity components. We study stars with measured chemical, seismic and astrometric properties from the APOGEE survey, the Kepler and Gaia satellites, respectively. We separate the [$α$/Fe]-[Fe/H] diagram into 3 stellar populations: the thin disc, the high-$α$ metal-poor thick disc and the high-$α$ metal-rich thick disc and characterise each o…
Asteroseismology is a promising tool to study Galactic structure and evolution because it can probe the ages of stars. Earlier attempts comparing seismic data from the {\it Kepler} satellite with predictions from Galaxy models found that the models predicted more low-mass stars compared to the observed distribution of masses. It was unclear if the mismatch was due to inaccuracies in the Galactic models, or the unknown aspects of the selection function of the stars. Using new data from the K2 mission, which has a well-defined selection function, we find that an old metal-poor thick disc, as use…
We analyze 494 main sequence turnoff and subgiant stars from the AMBRE:HARPS survey. These stars have accurate astrometric information from \textit{Gaia}/DR1, providing reliable age estimates with relative uncertainties of $\pm1-2$ Gyr and allowing precise orbital determinations. The sample is split based on chemistry into a low-[Mg/Fe] sequence, which are often identified as thin disk stellar populations, and a high-[Mg/Fe] sequence, which are often associated with the thick disk. We find that the high-[Mg/Fe] chemical sequence has extended star formation for several Gyr and is coeval with th…
Chronology of our Galaxy from Gaia colour-magnitude diagram fitting (ChronoGal) II. Unveiling the formation and evolution of the kinematically selected Thick and Thin Discs
Universidad de La Laguna（拉古纳大学）；Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias（加那利天体物理学研究所）；University of Granada（格拉纳达大学）；INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Abruzzo（意大利国家天体物理研究所阿布鲁佐天文台）；INFN, Sezione di Pisa（意大利国家核物理研究所比萨分部）；Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学卡普坦天文研究所）
The aim of this work is to determine abundances of neutron-capture elements for thin- and thick-disc F, G, and K stars in several sky fields near the north ecliptic pole and to compare the results with the Galactic chemical evolution models, to explore elemental gradients according to stellar ages, mean galactocentric distances, and maximum heights above the Galactic plane. The observational data were obtained with the 1.65m telescope at the Moletai Astronomical Observatory and a fibre-fed high-resolution spectrograph. Elemental abundances were determined using a differential spectrum synthesi…
We have obtained high-resolution spectra and carried out a detailed elemental abundance analysis for a new sample of 899 F and G dwarf stars in the Solar neighbourhood. The results allow us to, in a multi-dimensional space consisting of stellar ages, detailed elemental abundances, and full kinematic information for the stars, study and trace their respective origins. Here we briefly address selection criteria and discuss how to define a thick disc star. The results are discussed in the context of galaxy formation.
We extend our previous work on the age-chemical abundance structure of the Galactic outer disc to the inner disc (4 < r < 8 kpc) based on the SDSS/APOGEE survey. Different from the outer disc, the inner disc stars exhibit a clear bimodal distribution in the [Mg/Fe]-[Fe/H] plane. While a number of scenarios have been proposed in the literature, it remains challenging to recover this bimodal distribution with theoretical models. To this end, we present a chemical evolution model embedding a complex multi-phase inner disc formation scenario that matches the observed bimodal [Mg/Fe]-[Fe/H] distrib…
Divergent Evolution of Radial Metallicity Gradients in the Thin and Thick Disks of the Milky Way
CAS Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台光学天文重点实验室）；ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D)（澳大利亚天体物理学三维全天空卓越研究中心）；Department of Astronomy, Tsinghua University（清华大学天文系）；School of Physics and Astronomy, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学物理与天文学院）；School of Physics, University of New South Wales（新南威尔士大学物理学院）；South-Western Institute for Astronomy Research, Yunnan University（云南大学西南天文研究所）
A scenario for the formation of the bi-modality in the chemical space [$α$/Fe] vs [Fe/H] of the Milky Way was recently proposed in which $α$-enhanced stars are produced early and quickly in clumps. Besides accelerating the enrichment of the medium with $α$-elements, these clumps scatter the old stars, converting in-plane to vertical motion, forming a geometric thick disc. In this paper, by means of a detailed analysis of the data from smooth particle hydrodynamical simulations, we investigate the geometric properties (in particular of the chemical thick disc) produced in this scenario. For mon…
We employ our Bayesian Machine Learning framework BINGO (Bayesian INference for Galactic archaeOlogy) to obtain high-quality stellar age estimates for 68,360 red giant and red clump stars present in the 17th data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the APOGEE-2 high-resolution spectroscopic survey. By examining the denoised age-metallicity relationship of the Galactic disc stars, we identify a drop in metallicity with an increase in [Mg/Fe] at an early epoch, followed by a chemical enrichment episode with increasing [Fe/H] and decreasing [Mg/Fe]. This result is congruent with the chemical…
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…
Thick discs are nearly ubiquitous components of the discs of present-day galaxies. It has been proposed that a fraction of their stars has been accreted. Here, we aim to find whether accretion of satellites is the main thick disc formation mechanism. To do so, we observed a sample of eight nearby edge-on galaxies with the MUSE integral field unit at the VLT. Six of the galaxies have a distinct thick disc. We derived thick disc velocities and velocity dispersions for the galaxies in our sample. We devise a formalism to estimate the fractions of retrograde material in the thick discs by using ki…
In the MW bulge, metal-rich stars form a strong bar and are more peanut-shaped than metal-poor stars. It has been recently claimed that this behavior is driven by the initial in-plane radial velocity dispersion of these populations, rather than by their initial vertical random motions. This has led to the suggestion that a thick disc is not necessary to explain the characteristics of the MW bulge. We rediscuss this issue by analyzing two dissipationless N-body simulations of boxy/peanut (b/p)-shaped bulges formed from composite stellar discs, made of kinematically cold and hot stellar populati…
We study the role of radial migration of stars on the chemical evolution of the Milky Way disk. In particular, we are interested in the impact of that process on the local properties of the disk (age-metallicity relation and its dispersion, metallicity distribution, evolution of abundance ratios) and on the morphological properties of the resulting thick and thin disks.We use a model with several new or up-dated ingredients: atomic and molecular gas phases, star formation depending on molecular gas, yields from the recent homogeneous grid provided by Nomoto et al. (2013), observationally infer…
Within a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, we form a disc galaxy with sub- components which can be assigned to a thin stellar disc, thick disk, and a low mass stellar halo via a chemical decomposition. The thin and thick disc populations so selected are distinct in their ages, kinematics, and metallicities. Thin disc stars are young (<6.6 Gyr), possess low velocity dispersion (σU,V,W = 41, 31, 25 km/s), high [Fe/H], and low [O/Fe]. The thick disc stars are old (6.6<age<9.8 Gyrs), lag the thin disc by \sim21 km/s, possess higher velocity dispersion (σU,V,W = 49, 44, 35 km/s), relatively l…
The formation mechanisms of thick discs are under discussion. Thick discs might have formed either at high redshift on a short time-scale or might have been built slowly over time. They may have an internal or an external origin. Here we study in detail the kinematics and the stellar populations of the thick disc of ESO533-4. ESO533-4 is a nearby bulgeless galaxy. We present the first ever IFU study of an edge-on galaxy with enough depth to study the thick disc. We exposed ESO533-4 with VIMOS@VLT for 6.5hours. The FOV covered an axial extent 0.1-0.7r_25 (1-7kpc). We used pPXF and the MILES lib…
We present and discuss the stellar kinematics and populations of the S0 galaxy FCC 170 (NGC 1381) in the Fornax cluster, using deep MUSE data from the Fornax 3D survey. We show the maps of the first four moments of the stellar line-of-sight velocity distribution and of the mass-weighted mean stellar age, metallicity and [Mg/Fe] abundance ratio. The high-quality MUSE stellar kinematic measurements unveil the structure of this massive galaxy: a nuclear disk, a bar seen as a boxy bulge with a clear higher-velocity-dispersion X shape, a fast-rotating and flaring thin disk and a slower rotating thi…
By selecting in the RAVE-DR4 survey the stars located between 1 and 2 kpc above the Galactic plane, we question the consistency of the simplest three-component model (thin disc, thick disc, halo) for the Milky Way. We confirm that the metallicity and azimuthal velocity distribution functions of the thick disc are not Gaussian. In particular, we find that the thick disc has an extended metallicity tail going at least down to [M/H]=-2 dex, contributing roughly at 3% of the entire thick disc population and having a shorter scale-length compared to the canonical thick disc. The mean azimuthal velo…
We present estimates of stellar age and mass for 0.93 million Galactic disk main sequence turn-off and sub-giant stars from the LAMOST Galactic Spectroscopic Surveys. The ages and masses are determined by matching with stellar isochrones using Bayesian algorithm, utilizing effective temperature $T_{\rm eff}$, absolute magnitude ${\rm M}_V$, metallicity [Fe/H] and $α$-element to iron abundance ratio [$α$/Fe] deduced from the LAMOST spectra. Extensive examinations suggest the age and mass estimates are robust. The overall sample stars have a median error of 34 per cent for the age estimates, and…
We have developed a novel Markov Chain Mote Carlo (MCMC) chemical "painting" technique to explore possible radial and vertical metallicity gradients for the thick disc progenitor. In our analysis we match an N-body simulation to the data from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) survey. We assume that the thick disc has a constant scale-height and has completed its formation at an early epoch, after which time radial mixing of its stars has taken place. Under these assumptions, we find that the initial radial metallicity gradient of the thick disc progenitor shou…
We aim to understand the accretion history of the Milky Way by exploring the vertical and radial properties of the Galactic thick disc. We study the chemical and kinematic properties of roughly a thousand spectra of faint magnitude foreground Galactic stars observed serendipitously during extra-galactic surveys in four lines-of-sight: three in the southern Galactic hemisphere (surveys of the Carina, Fornax and Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxies) and one in the northern Galactic hemisphere (a survey of the Sextans dwarf spheroidal galaxy). The foreground stars span distances up to 3kpc from the…
Recent studies have made the community aware of scattered light when examining low-surface-brightness galaxy features such as thick discs. In our past studies of the thick discs of edge-on galaxies in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S$^4$G) we modelled the point spread function as a Gaussian. We re-examine our results using a revised point spread function model that accounts for extended wings out to more than 2.5arcmin. We study the $3.6μ{\rm m}$ images of 141 edge-on galaxies from the S$^4$G. We decompose the surface brightness profiles of the galaxies perpendicular to t…
Knowledge of ages for stars formed over a galaxy's lifetime is fundamental to understand its formation and evolution. However, stellar ages are difficult to obtain since they cannot be measured from observations, being comparison with stellar models (Soderblom 2010) required. Alternatively, age distributions can be derived applying the robust technique of colour-magnitude diagram fitting (Gallart et al. 2005), till now mainly employed to study nearby galaxies. The new distances to individual Milky Way stars from the Gaia mission (Brown et al. 2018) have allowed us to use this technique to deri…
Star clusters, particularly those objects in the disk-bulge-halo interface are as of yet poorly charted, albeit carrying important information about the formation and the structure of the Milky Way. Here, we present a detailed chemical abundance study of the recently discovered object Gaia 1. Photometry has previously suggested it as an intermediate-age, moderately metal-rich system, although the exact values for its age and metallicity remained ambiguous in the literature. We measured detailed chemical abundances of 14 elements in four red giant members, from high-resolution (R=25000) spectra…
We explore trends in the morphology and line-of-sight (los) velocity of stellar populations in the inner regions of disc galaxies, using N-body simulations with both a thin (kinematically cold) and a thick (kinematically hot) disc which form a bar and boxy/peanut (b/p) bulge. The bar in the thin disc component is $\sim$50\% stronger than the thick disc bar and is more elongated, with an axis ratio almost half that of the thick disc bar. The thin disc b/p bulge has a pronounced X-shape, while the thick disc b/p is weaker with a rather boxy shape. This leads to the signature of the b/p bulge in …
Several recent studies reinforce the existence of a thick molecular disc in galaxies along with the dynamically cold thin disc. Assuming a two-component molecular disc, we model the disc of NGC 6946 as a four-component system consisting of stars, HI, thin disc molecular gas, and thick disc molecular gas in vertical hydrostatic equilibrium. Following, we set up the joint Poisson-Boltzmann equation of hydrostatic equilibrium and solve it numerically to obtain a three-dimensional density distribution of different baryonic components. Using the density solutions and the observed rotation curve, we…
Galactic discs are known to have a complex multilayer structure. An in-depth study of the stellar population properties of the thin and thick components can elucidate the formation and evolution of disc galaxies. Even though thick discs are ubiquitous, their origin is still debated. Here we probe the thick disc formation scenarios by investigating NGC7572, an enormous edge-on galaxy having $R_{25}\approx 25$ kpc and $V_{\rm rot} \approx 370$ km s$^{-1}$, which substantially exceeds the Milky Way size and mass. We analysed DECaLS archival imaging and found that the disc of NGC7572 contains two …
Since thin disc stars are younger than thick disc stars on average, the thin disc is predicted by some models to start forming after the thick disc had formed, around 10 Gyr ago. Accordingly, no significant old thin disc population should exist. Using 6-D coordinates from Gaia-DR2 and age estimates from Sanders & Das (2018), we select $\sim 24000$ old stars (${τ> 10}$ Gyr, with uncertainties $\lesssim 15\%$) within 2 kpc from the Sun (full sample). A cross-match with APOGEE-DR16 ($\sim 1000$ stars) reveals comparable fractions of old chemically defined thin/thick disc stars. We show that the f…
We study the chemical evolution of the thick and thin discs of the Galaxy by comparing detailed chemical evolution models with recent data from the AMBRE Project. The data suggest that the stars in the thick and thin discs form two distinct sequences with the thick disc stars showing higher [α/Fe] ratios. We adopt two different approaches to model the evolution of thick and thin discs. In particular, we adopt: i) a two-infall approach where the thick disc forms fast and before the thin disc and by means of a fast gas accretion episode, whereas the thin disc forms by means of a second accretion…
We analyse disc heating and radial migration in N-body models of growing disc galaxies with thick and thin discs. Similar to thin-disc-only models, galaxies with appropriate non-axisymmetric structures reproduce observational constraints on radial disc heating in and migration to the Solar Neighbourhood (Snhd). The presence of thick discs can suppress non-axisymmetries and thus higher baryonic-to-dark matter fractions are required than in models that only have a thin disc. Models that are baryon-dominated to roughly the Solar radius R_0 are favoured, in agreement with data for the Milky Way. F…
We study the structure, age and metallicity gradients, and dynamical evolution using a cosmological zoom-in simulation of a Milky Way-mass galaxy from the Feedback in Realistic Environments project. In the simulation, stars older than 6 Gyr were formed in a chaotic, bursty mode and have the largest vertical scale heights (1.5-2.5 kpc) by z=0, while stars younger than 6 Gyr were formed in a relatively calm, stable disk. The vertical scale height increases with stellar age at all radii, because (1) stars that formed earlier were thicker "at birth", and (2) stars were kinematically heated to an e…
We study the evolution of Milky Way thick and thin discs in the light of the most recent observational data. In particular, we analyze abundance gradients of O, N, Fe and Mg along the thin disc as well as the [Mg/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] relations and the metallicity distribution functions at different Galactocentric distances. We run several models starting from the two-infall paradigm, assuming that the thick and thin discs formed by means of two different infall episodes, and we explore several physical parameters, such as radial gas flows, variable efficiency of star formation, different times for t…
