The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way’s inner stellar halo and thick disk

Amina Helmi (), Carine Babusiaux, Helmer H. Koppelman, Davide Massari, Jovan Veljanoski and Anthony G. A. Brown
Additional contact information
Amina Helmi: University of Groningen
Carine Babusiaux: Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG
Helmer H. Koppelman: University of Groningen
Davide Massari: University of Groningen
Jovan Veljanoski: University of Groningen
Anthony G. A. Brown: Leiden University

Nature, 2018, vol. 563, issue 7729, 85-88

Abstract: Abstract The assembly of our Galaxy can be reconstructed using the motions and chemistry of individual stars1,2. Chemo-dynamical studies of the stellar halo near the Sun have indicated the presence of multiple components3, such as streams4 and clumps5, as well as correlations between the stars’ chemical abundances and orbital parameters6–8. Recently, analyses of two large stellar surveys9,10 revealed the presence of a well populated elemental abundance sequence7,11, two distinct sequences in the colour–magnitude diagram12 and a prominent, slightly retrograde kinematic structure13,14 in the halo near the Sun, which may trace an important accretion event experienced by the Galaxy15. However, the link between these observations and their implications for Galactic history is not well understood. Here we report an analysis of the kinematics, chemistry, age and spatial distribution of stars that are mainly linked to two major Galactic components: the thick disk and the stellar halo. We demonstrate that the inner halo is dominated by debris from an object that at infall was slightly more massive than the Small Magellanic Cloud, and which we refer to as Gaia–Enceladus. The stars that originate in Gaia–Enceladus cover nearly the full sky, and their motions reveal the presence of streams and slightly retrograde and elongated trajectories. With an estimated mass ratio of four to one, the merger of the Milky Way with Gaia–Enceladus must have led to the dynamical heating of the precursor of the Galactic thick disk, thus contributing to the formation of this component approximately ten billion years ago. These findings are in line with the results of galaxy formation simulations, which predict that the inner stellar halo should be dominated by debris from only a few massive progenitors2,16.

Keywords: Stellar Halo; Galactic Thick Disk; Galaxy Formation Simulations; Relative Parallax Error; Mock Dataset (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0625-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:563:y:2018:i:7729:d:10.1038_s41586-018-0625-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0625-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().