Bibcode
Gallart, Carme; Ruiz-Lara, Tomás; Bernard, Edouard J.; Brook, Chris B.; Cassisi, Santi; Hill, Vanessa; Monelli, Matteo
Referencia bibliográfica
53rd ESLAB Symposium: The Gaia Universe, held 8-12 April, 2019 at ESTEC/ESA, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. Online at https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/53rd-eslab-symposium, id.40
Fecha de publicación:
4
2019
Número de citas
1
Número de citas referidas
1
Descripción
The technique of color-magnitude diagram (CMD) fitting is a well
recognized method that has been used for over 20 years to determine
detailed star formation histories (SFH) for Local Group galaxies
(Gallart et al. 2005; Tolstoy et al. 2009). The accurate distances for
large stellar samples provided in Gaia DR2, together with the precise,
homogeneous Gaia photometry, is enabling for the first time to apply the
CMD-fitting technique to the different morphological components of our
own Galaxy and to robustly derive their SFHs and age distributions using
only the Gaia photometric information of millions of stars. This
provides answers to long lasting questions regarding the formation and
evolution of the disk and halo components of the Milky Way, for which
the determination of stellar ages was necessary. In this presentation
we discuss two examples resulting from our ongoing work.1. Thanks to the
CMD fitting method, a SFH profile across the Galactic disk has been
obtained for the first time: we have constructed CMDs and computed SFHs
for a number of layers parallel to the Milky Way plane, at different
heights up to Z=2 Kpc above and below the plane, and close to the solar
radius. We call these SFHs 'dynamically evolved SFHs' because the
stellar sample present in each volume is potentially affected by stellar
migration and blurring. Several epochs of enhanced star formation ( 10,
6 and 2 ago) can be observed close to the plane, up to |Z| 400 pc. At
larger distances from the plane, the younger star forming epochs
gradually diminish their relative strength. This results in a smooth
change in the SFR(t) as a function of height |Z|, with mean age
increasing with |Z|. The distinct epoch of star formation between 13 and
8 Gyr ago may correspond to the formation of the thick disk.2. The CMD
of the kinematically selected Milky Way halo population published from
Gaia DR2 data (Babusiaux et al. 2018) showed two enigmatic sequences
running parallel in color from the main sequence to the sub-giant and
red-giant branch, indicating the presence of two distinct
subpopulations. The blue sequence has been associated with a major
accretion event experienced by the Milky Way early in its history (Helmi
et al. 2018; Haywood et al. 2018), while the red sequence has been
associated with the thick disk (Haywood et al. 2018) by the similarity
in chemical composition. We have derived age distributions for the two
halo sequences and for a thick disk stellar sample. The age
distributions clearly demonstrate that the two sequences in the halo CMD
are composed by stars that are coeval and formed at the earliest
possible times in the life of the Universe. The difference in color is a
result of the red and blue sequence stars having different
metallicities. The inferred age distributions also clearly show that the
thick disc population includes a stellar population that is younger than
the two halo populations. These results, allow us to tightly constrain
that the merger occurred 10 Gyr ago, and to conclude that the red
sequence is composed by stars formed in the Milky Way during its first
3 Gyr of evolution, right before the merger with Gaia-Enceladus took
place, and heated to halo-like kinematics by the impact. The associated
infalling gas would have contributed to maintain and stoke star
formation in the early disk up to a second epoch of maximum inferred
intensity 9.5 Gyr ago.