Rapid early gas accretion for the inner Galactic disc (original) (raw)
2022, Astronomy & Astrophysics
Context. Recent observations of the Milky Way and galaxies at high redshifts suggest that galaxy discs were already in place soon after the Big Bang. While the gas infall history of the Milky Way in the inner disc has long been assumed to be characterised by a short accretion timescale, this has not been directly constrained using observations. Aims. Using data for the inner regions of the Milky Way recently produced by APOGEE and Gaia and of unprecedented quantity and quality, we aim to derive strong constraints on the infall history of the inner (< 6 kpc) Galaxy (with a focus on stars between 4 and 6 kpc, which we show is an appropriate proxy for the entire inner disc). Methods. We implemented gas infall into a chemical evolution model of the Galaxy disc, and used a Schmidt–Kennicutt law to connect the infall to the star formation. We explore a number of models, and two different formulations of the infall law. In one formulation, the infall is non-parametric, and in the other ...
Related papers
Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2018
We show that the bulge and the disk of the Milky Way (MW) at R ≲ 7 kpc are well described by a unique chemical evolution and a two-phase star formation history (SFH). We argue that the populations within this inner disk, not the entire disk, are the same, and that the outer Lindblad resonance (OLR) of the bar plays a key role in explaining this uniformity. In our model of a two-phase SFH, the metallicity, [α/Fe] and [α/H] distributions, and age-metallicity relation are all compatible with the observations of both the inner disk and bulge. The dip at [Fe/H] ∼ 0 dex seen in the metallicity distributions of the bulge and inner disk reflects the quenching episode in the SFH of the inner MW at age ∼8 Gyr, and the common evolution of the bulge and inner disk stars. Our results for the inner region of the MW, R ≲ 7 kpc, are consistent with a rapid build-up of a large fraction of its total baryonic mass within a few billion years. We show that at z ≤ 1.5, when the MW was starting to quench,...
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.