Bibcode
Lee, Young S.; Schonrich, R.; Beers, T. C.; Heather, M. L.; An, D.; Allende Prieto, C.; Asplund, M.; Carollo, D.; Rockosi, C. M.
Bibliographical reference
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #413.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.250
Advertised on:
1
2010
Citations
0
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0
Description
The Milky Way's thick disk was originally identified by fitting the
vertical density distribution of stars to a double exponential profile.
Recent investigations have shown that, in addition to being older, thick
disk stars show chemical and kinematical properties distinct from the
thin disk. Most scenarios of thick disk formation discussed to date
emphasize mergers, e.g., heating of a pre-existing thin disk, accretion
of stars from disrupted
satellites, or in-situ formation induced by infalling gas-rich systems.
Recently, however, growing observational and theoretical evidence has
suggested that the thick disk might be the result of the cumulative
radial migration of disk stars over the history of the Galaxy. According
to these models, disk stars move radially over their lifetimes,
spreading the chemical signatures associated with their birth place at a
range of galactocentric distances and giving rise to chemical and
kinematical signatures corresponding to the common thin and thick disk
divisions. In this study we search for observational signatures of
radial mixing in the disk populations based on a large sample of F-and
G-type dwarfs observed by SEGUE-1, divided into thin and thick disk
populations characterized by low (-0.1 <[α/Fe] < +0.2) and
high (+0.3 < [α/Fe] < +0.6) α-abundances,
respectively. We also demonstrate that we are able to determine
[α/Fe] with an accuracy of < 0.1 dex down to S/N = 20/1 for the
SEGUE stellar spectra.
This work was supported in part by grants PHY 02-16783 and PHY
08-22648: Physics Frontiers Center / Joint Institute for Nuclear
Astrophysics (JINA), awarded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.