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Register a new userDissecting simulated disc galaxies I: the structure of mono-age populations
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We study seven simulated disc galaxies, three with a quiescent merger history, and four with mergers in their last 9 Gyr of evolution. We compare their structure at z=0 by decomposing them into mono-age populations (MAPs) of stars within 500 Myr age bins. All studied galaxies undergo a phase of merging activity at high redshift, so that stars older than 9 Gyr are found in a centrally concentrated component, while younger stars are mostly found in discs. We find that most MAPs have simple exponential radial and vertical density profiles, with a scale-height that typically increases with age. Because a large range of merger histories can create populations with simple structures, this suggests that the simplicity of the structure of mono-abundance populations observed in the Milky Way by Bovy et al. (2012b,c) is not necessarily a direct indicator of a quiescent history for the Milky Way. Similarly, the anti-correlation between scale-length and scale-height does not necessarily imply a merger-free history. However, mergers produce discontinuities between thin and thick disc components, and jumps in the age-velocity relation. The absence of a structural discontinuity between thin and thick disc observed in the Milky Way would seem to be a good indicator that no merger with a mass ratio larger than 1:15-1:10 occurred in the last 9 Gyr. Mergers at higher redshift might nevertheless be necessary to produce the thickest, hottest components of the Milky Ways disc.
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We study the relation between stellar ages and vertical velocity dispersion (the age-velocity relation, or AVR) in a sample of seven simulated disc galaxies. In our simulations, the shape of the AVR for stars younger than 9 Gyr depends strongly on the merger history at low redshift, with even 1:10 - 1:15 mergers being able to create jumps in the AVR (although these jumps might not be detectable if the errors on stellar ages are on the order of 30%). For galaxies with a quiescent history at low redshift, we find that the vertical velocity dispersion rises smoothly for ages up to 8-9 Gyr, following a power law with a slope of ~0.5, similar to what is observed in the solar neighbourhood by the Geneva-Copenhagen Survey. For these galaxies, we show that the slope of the AVR is not imprinted at birth, but is the result of subsequent heating. By contrast, in all our simulations, the oldest stars form a significantly different population, with a high velocity dispersion. These stars are usually born kinematically hot in a turbulent phase of intense mergers at high redshift, and also include some stars accreted from satellites. This maximum in velocity dispersion is strongly decreased when age errors are included, suggesting that observations can easily miss such a jump with the current accuracy of age measurements.
Studying the Milky Way disk structure using stars in narrow bins of [Fe/H] and [alpha/Fe] has recently been proposed as a powerful method to understand the Galactic thick and thin disk formation. It has been assumed so far that these mono-abundance populations (MAPs) are also coeval, or mono-age, populations. Here we study this relationship for a Milky Way chemo-dynamical model and show that equivalence between MAPs and mono-age populations exists only for the high-[alpha/Fe] tail, where the chemical evolution curves of different Galactic radii are far apart. At lower [alpha/Fe]-values a MAP is composed of stars with a range in ages, even for small observational uncertainties and a small MAP bin size. Due to the disk inside-out formation, for these MAPs younger stars are typically located at larger radii, which results in negative radial age gradients that can be as large as 2 Gyr/kpc. Positive radial age gradients can result for MAPs at the lowest [alpha/Fe] and highest [Fe/H] end. Such variations with age prevent the simple interpretation of observations for which accurate ages are not available. Studying the variation with radius of the stellar surface density and scale-height in our model, we find good agreement to recent analyses of the APOGEE red-clump (RC) sample when 1-4 Gyr old stars dominate (as expected for the RC). Our results suggest that the APOGEE data are consistent with a Milky Way model for which mono-age populations flare for all ages. We propose observational tests for the validity of our predictions and argue that using accurate age measurements, such as from asteroseismology, is crucial for putting constraints on the Galactic formation and evolution.
Using 22 hydrodynamical simulated galaxies in a LCDM cosmological context we recover not only the observed baryonic Tully-Fisher relation, but also the observed mass discrepancy--acceleration relation, which reflects the distribution of the main components of the galaxies throughout their disks. This implies that the simulations, which span the range 52 < V$_{rm flat}$ < 222 km/s where V$_{rm flat}$ is the circular velocity at the flat part of the rotation curve, and match galaxy scaling relations, are able to recover the observed relations between the distributions of stars, gas and dark matter over the radial range for which we have observational rotation curve data. Furthermore, we explicitly match the observed baryonic to halo mass relation for the first time with simulated galaxies. We discuss our results in the context of the baryon cycle that is inherent in these simulations, and with regards to the effect of baryonic processes on the distribution of dark matter.
We analyse the kinematics and chemistry of the bulge stars of two simulated disc galaxies using our chemodynamical galaxy evolution code GCD+. First we compare stars that are born inside the galaxy with those that are born outside the galaxy and are accreted into the centre of the galaxy. Stars that originate outside of the bulge are accreted into it early in its formation within 3 Gyrs so that these stars have high [alpha/Fe] as well as having a high total energy reflecting their accretion to the centre of the galaxy. Therefore, higher total energy is a good indicator for finding accreted stars. The bulges of the simulated galaxies formed through multiple mergers separated by about a Gyr. Since [alpha/Fe] is sensitive to the first few Gyrs of star formation history, stars that formed during mergers at different epochs show different [alpha/Fe]. We show that the [Mg/Fe] against star formation time relation can be very useful to identify a multiple merger bulge formation scenario, provided there is sufficiently good age information available. Our simulations also show that stars formed during one of the merger events retain a systematically prograde rotation at the final time. This demonstrates that the orbit of the ancient merger that helped to form the bulge could still remain in the kinematics of bulge stars.
We extend our previous work on the age-chemical abundance structure of the Galactic outer disc to the inner disc (4 < r < 8 kpc) based on the SDSS/APOGEE survey. Different from the outer disc, the inner disc stars exhibit a clear bimodal distribution in the [Mg/Fe]-[Fe/H] plane. While a number of scenarios have been proposed in the literature, it remains challenging to recover this bimodal distribution with theoretical models. To this end, we present a chemical evolution model embedding a complex multi-phase inner disc formation scenario that matches the observed bimodal [Mg/Fe]-[Fe/H] distribution. In this scenario, the formation of the inner disc is dominated by two main starburst episodes 6 Gyr apart with secular, low-level star formation activity in between. In our model, the first starburst occurs at early cosmic times (t~1 Gyr) and the second one 6 Gyr later at a cosmic time of t~7 Gyr. Both these starburst episodes are associated with gas accretion events in our model, and are quenched rapidly. The first starburst leads to the formation of the high-$alpha$ sequence, and the second starburst leads to the formation of the metal-poor low-$alpha$ sequence. The metal-rich low-$alpha$ stars, instead, form during the secular evolution phase between the two bursts. Our model shows that the $alpha$-dichotomy originates from the rapid suppression of star formation after the first starburst. The two starburst episodes are likely to be responsible for the formation of the geometric thick disc (z >1 kpc), with the old inner thick disc and the young outer thick disc forming during the first and the second starbursts, respectively.
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