Geometrical structures of chemically decomposed thick and thin disk populations

Kawata, Daisuke; Brook, Chris; Rahimi, Awat; Gibson, Brad

Abstract

We summarize the thick and thin disk formation commonly seen in cosmological N-body simulations. As suggested in Brook et al. (2004), a hierarchical clustering scenario causes multiple minor gas-rich mergers, and leads to the formation of a kinematically hot disk, thick disk population, at a high redshift. Once the mergers become less significant at a later epoch, the thin disk population starts building up. Because in this scenario the thick disk population forms intensively at high redshift through multiple gas-rich mergers, the thick disk population is compact and has systematically higher [α/Fe] abundance than the thin disk population. We discuss that the thick disk population would be affected by the formation of the thin disk and suffer from the radial migration, which helps the thick disk population to be observed in the solar neighborhood. In addition, we show that the current cosmological simulations also naturally predict that the thin disk population is flaring at the outer region. As shown in Rahimi et al. (2014), at high vertical height from the disk plane, the compact thick disk population (low metallicity and high [α/Fe]) is dominant in the inner region and the flaring thin disk population (high metallicity and low [α/Fe]) contributes more in the outer region. This helps to explain the positive radial metallicity gradient and negative radial [α/Fe] gradient observed at high vertical height in the Milky Way stellar disk.

Citation

Kawata, D., Brook, C., Rahimi, A., & Gibson, B. (2017). Geometrical structures of chemically decomposed thick and thin disk populations.

• Acceptance Date: Mar 2, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Aug 1, 2016
• Publication Date: 2017
• Deposit Date: Mar 8, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 8, 2017
• Journal: Multi-object spectroscopy in the next decade
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 27
• Series Title: ASP Conference Series
• Series Number: 507
• Series ISSN: 1050-3390
• ISBN: 9781583818985
• Keywords: Thick and thin disk formation; Redshift
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/449276
• Publisher URL: Published chapter available at http://www.aspbooks.org/a/volumes/article_details/?paper_id=37842.