Sofia Feltzing
Professor of astronomy
The Gaia-ESO Survey: a quiescent Milky Way with no significant dark/stellar accreted disc
Author
Summary, in English
According to our current cosmological model, galaxies like the Milky Way are expected to experience many mergers over their lifetimes. The most massive of the merging galaxies will be dragged towards the disc plane, depositing stars and dark matter into an accreted disc structure. In this work, we utilize the chemodynamical template developed in Ruchti et al. to hunt for accreted stars. We apply the template to a sample of 4675 stars in the third internal data release from the Gaia-ESO Spectroscopic Survey. We find a significant component of accreted halo stars, but find no evidence of an accreted disc component. This suggests that the Milky Way has had a rather quiescent merger history since its disc formed some 8-10 billion years ago and therefore possesses no significant dark matter disc.
Department/s
- Lund Observatory - Has been reorganised
Publishing year
2015
Language
English
Pages
2874-2887
Publication/Series
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume
450
Issue
3
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Topic
- Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Keywords
- surveys
- stars: abundances
- stars: kinematics and dynamics
- Galaxy:
- disc
- Galaxy: evolution
- Galaxy: formation
Status
Published
Project
- Gaia-ESO Survey
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1365-2966