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- ItemThe AMBRE Project: [Y/Mg] stellar dating calibration with Gaia(Les Ulis : EDP Sciences, 2019) Titarenko, A.; Recio-Blanco, A.; de Laverny, P.; Hayden, M.; Guiglion, G.Chemical abundance dating methods open new paths for temporal evolution studies of the Milky Way stellar populations. In this paper, we use a high spectral resolution database of turn-off stars in the solar neighbourhood to study the age dependence of the [Y/Mg] chemical abundance ratio. Our analysis reveals a clear correlation between [Y/Mg] and age for thin disc stars of different metallicities, in synergy with previous studies of solar-type stars. In addition, no metallicity dependence with stellar age is detected, allowing us to use the [Y/Mg] ratio as a reliable age proxy. Finally, the [Y/Mg]-age relation presents a discontinuity between thin and thick disc stars around 9-10 Gyr. For thick disc stars, the correlation has a different zero point and probably a steeper trend with age, reflecting the different chemical evolution histories of the two disc components.
- ItemThe SEDIGISM survey: The influence of spiral arms on the molecular gas distribution of the inner Milky Way(Les Ulis : EDP Sciences, 2022) Colombo, D.; Duarte-Cabral, A.; Pettitt, A.R.; Urquhart, J. S.; Wyrowski, F.; Csengeri, T.; Neralwar, K.R.; Schuller, F.; Menten, K.M.; Anderson, L.; Barnes, P.; Beuther, H.; Bronfman, L.; Eden, D.; Ginsburg, A.; Henning, T.; König, C.; Lee, M.-Y.; Mattern, M.; Medina, S.; Ragan, S.E.; Rigby, A. J.; Sánchez-Monge, Á.; Traficante, A.; Yang, A. Y.; Wienen, M.The morphology of the Milky Way is still a matter of debate. In order to shed light on uncertainties surrounding the structure of the Galaxy, in this paper, we study the imprint of spiral arms on the distribution and properties of its molecular gas. To do so, we take full advantage of the SEDIGISM (Structure, Excitation, and Dynamics of the Inner Galactic Interstellar Medium) survey that observed a large area of the inner Galaxy in the 13CO (2-1) line at an angular resolution of 28′′. We analyse the influences of the spiral arms by considering the features of the molecular gas emission as a whole across the longitude-velocity map built from the full survey. Additionally, we examine the properties of the molecular clouds in the spiral arms compared to the properties of their counterparts in the inter-arm regions. Through flux and luminosity probability distribution functions, we find that the molecular gas emission associated with the spiral arms does not differ significantly from the emission between the arms. On average, spiral arms show masses per unit length of ~105-106 M⊙ kpc-1. This is similar to values inferred from data sets in which emission distributions were segmented into molecular clouds. By examining the cloud distribution across the Galactic plane, we infer that the molecular mass in the spiral arms is a factor of 1.5 higher than that of the inter-arm medium, similar to what is found for other spiral galaxies in the local Universe. We observe that only the distributions of cloud mass surface densities and aspect ratio in the spiral arms show significant differences compared to those of the inter-arm medium; other observed differences appear instead to be driven by a distance bias. By comparing our results with simulations and observations of nearby galaxies, we conclude that the measured quantities would classify the Milky Way as a flocculent spiral galaxy, rather than as a grand-design one.
- ItemA self-consistent dynamical model of the Milky Way disc adjusted to Gaia data(Les Ulis : EDP Sciences, 2022) Robin, A.C.; Bienaymé, O.; Salomon, J.B.; Reylé, C.; Lagarde, N.; Figueras, F.; Mor, R.; Fernández-Trincado, J.G.; Montillaud, J.Context. Accurate astrometry achieved by Gaia for many stars in the Milky Way provides an opportunity to reanalyse the Galactic stellar populations from a large and homogeneous sample and to revisit the Galaxy gravitational potential. Aims. This paper shows how a self-consistent dynamical model can be obtained by fitting the gravitational potential of the Milky Way to the stellar kinematics and densities from Gaia data. Methods. We derived a gravitational potential using the Besancon Galaxy Model, and computed the disc stellar distribution functions based on three integrals of motion (E, Lz, I3) to model stationary stellar discs. The gravitational potential and the stellar distribution functions are built self-consistently, and are then adjusted to be in agreement with the kinematics and the density distributions obtained from Gaia observations. A Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is used to fit the free parameters of the dynamical model to Gaia parallax and proper motion distributions. The fit is done on several sets of Gaia data, mainly a subsample of the GCNS (Gaia catalogue of nearby stars to 100 pc) with G< 17, together with 26 deep fields selected from eDR3, widely spread in longitudes and latitudes. Results. We are able to determine the velocity dispersion ellipsoid and its tilt for subcomponents of different ages, both varying with R and z. The density laws and their radial scale lengths for the thin and thick disc populations are also obtained self-consistently. This new model has some interesting characteristics that come naturally from the process, such as a flaring thin disc. The thick disc is found to present very distinctive characteristics from the old thin disc, both in density and kinematics. This lends significant support to the idea that thin and thick discs were formed in distinct scenarios, as the density and kinematics transition between them is found to be abrupt. The dark matter halo is shown to be nearly spherical. We also derive the solar motion with regards to the Local Standard of Rest (LSR), finding U· = 10.79 ± 0.56 km s-1, V· = 11.06 ± 0.94 km s-1, and W· = 7.66 ± 0.43 km s-1, in close agreement with recent studies. Conclusions. The resulting fully self-consistent gravitational potential, still axisymmetric, is a good approximation of a smooth mass distribution in the Milky Way and can be used for further studies, including finding streams, substructures, and to compute orbits for real stars in our Galaxy.
- ItemChemical Abundances and Ages of the Bulge Stars in APOGEE High-velocity Peaks(London : Institute of Physics Publ., 2017) Zhou, Yingying; Shen, Juntai; Liu, Chao; Li, Zhao-Yu; Mao, Shude; Kunder, Andrea; Rich, R. Michael; Zasowski, G.; Fernandez-Trincado, J. G.; Majewski, Steven R.; Lin, Chien-Cheng; Geisler, Doug; Tang, Baitian; Villanova, S.; Roman-Lopes, A.; Schultheis, M.; Nidever, David L.; Meza, Andrés; Pan, Kaike; Bizyaev, D. V.A cold, high-velocity (HV, ∼200 km s-1) peak was first reported in several Galactic bulge fields based on the Apache Point Observatory Galaxy Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) commissioning observations. Both the existence and the nature of the HV peak are still under debate. Here we revisit this feature with the latest APOGEE DR13 data. We find that most of the low-latitude bulge fields display a skewed Gaussian distribution with an HV shoulder. However, only 3 out of 53 fields show distinct HV peaks around 200 km s-1. The velocity distribution can be well described by Gauss-Hermite polynomials, except for the three fields showing clear HV peaks. We find that the correlation between the skewness parameter (h 3) and the mean velocity (), instead of a distinctive HV peak, is a strong indicator of the bar. It was recently suggested that the HV peak is composed of preferentially young stars. We choose three fields showing clear HV peaks to test this hypothesis using the metallicity, [α/M], and [C/N] as age proxies. We find that both young and old stars show HV features. The similarity between the chemical abundances of stars in the HV peaks and the main component indicates that they are not systematically different in terms of chemical abundance or age. In contrast, there are clear differences in chemical space between stars in the Sagittarius dwarf and the bulge stars. The strong HV peaks off-plane are still to be explained properly and could be different in nature.