arXivDaily arXiv每日学术速递 周一至周五更新
北美退伍军人节(Veterans Day),12 日无更新
arXiv 2212.04515astro-ph.GA
收藏

没有地方比得上家——寻找银河系中恒星的诞生半径

There is No Place Like Home -- Finding Birth Radii of Stars in the Milky Way

Yuxi Lu, Ivan Minchev, Tobias Buck, Sergey Khoperskov, Matthias Steinmetz, Noam Libeskind, Gabriele Cescutti, Ken C. Freeman, Bridget Ratcliffe

AI总结:

本研究提出一种仅需最少先验假设、通过恒星年龄与金属丰度回溯其诞生半径的方法,揭示了银河系诞生金属丰度梯度的演化特征,并估算出太阳的诞生位置,为还原银河系形成历史提供关键支撑。

摘要:

随着时间推移,恒星会通过被称为径向迁移的过程远离其诞生地,这一过程会模糊用于重构银河系(MW)形成历史的化学-运动学关系。要理解银河系的真实时间演化,就必须考虑这一过程的影响。我们证明,在对银河系增丰历史做最少先验假设的情况下,可直接从数据中推导出恒星的诞生半径。具体方法是:首先通过恒星诞生金属丰度梯度$d\mathrm{[Fe/H]}(R, τ)/dR$与当前作为年龄函数的金属丰度范围之间的反比关系,恢复该梯度的时间演化,从而让我们能将任何具有年龄和金属丰度测量值的恒星回溯到其诞生地$R_b$。将我们的方法应用于一个大样本、高精度的银河系盘亚巨星数据集后,我们发现,在110亿至80亿年前,诞生金属丰度梯度出现变陡的趋势,这一时间与最后一次大质量并合事件——Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus(GSE,盖亚-香肠-土卫二并合事件)的发生时间吻合。这一转变似乎在塑造年龄-金属丰度关系以及[$α$/Fe]-[Fe/H]平面中的双峰结构方面发挥了重要作用。通过将银盘拆解为单$R_b$星族,低[$α$/Fe]序列上出现了若干团块,这些团块在总样本中无法观测到,且其出现时间与已知的恒星形成爆发期一致,可能与人马座矮星系相关。我们估算出太阳的诞生位置距离银河系中心$4.5\pm 0.4$千秒差距(kpc)。我们的$R_b$估算结果为还原银河系形成历史提供了此前缺失的关键一环。

英文摘要:

Stars move away from their birthplaces over time via a process known as radial migration, which blurs chemo-kinematic relations used for reconstructing the Milky Way (MW) formation history. To understand the true time evolution of the MW, one needs to take into account the effects of this process. We show that stellar birth radii can be derived directly from the data with minimum prior assumptions on the Galactic enrichment history. This is done by first recovering the time evolution of the stellar birth metallicity gradient, $d\mathrm{[Fe/H]}(R, τ)/dR$, through its inverse relation to the metallicity range as a function of age today, allowing us to place any star with age and metallicity measurements back to its birthplace, $R_b$. Applying our method to a large, high-precision data set of MW disk subgiant stars, we find a steepening of the birth metallicity gradient from 11 to 8 Gyr ago, which coincides with the time of the last massive merger, Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE). This transition appears to play a major role in shaping both the age-metallicity relation and the bimodality in the [$α$/Fe]-[Fe/H] plane. By dissecting the disk into mono-$R_b$ populations, clumps in the low-[$α$/Fe] sequence appear, which are not seen in the total sample and coincide in time with known star-formation bursts, possibly associated with the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. We estimated that the Sun was born at $4.5\pm 0.4$~kpc from the Galactic center. Our $R_b$ estimates provide the missing piece needed to recover the Milky Way formation history.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

↑