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Register a new userA Kiloparsec-Scale Nuclear Stellar Disk in the Milky Way as a Possible Explanation of the High Velocity Peaks in the Galactic Bulge
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Added by
Victor P. Debattista
Publication date
2015
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment has measured the stellar velocities of red giant stars in the inner Milky Way. We confirm that the line of sight velocity distributions (LOSVDs) in the mid-plane exhibit a second peak at high velocities, whereas those at |b| = 2degrees do not. We use a high resolution simulation of a barred galaxy, which crucially includes gas and star formation, to guide our interpretation of the LOSVDs. We show that the data are fully consistent with the presence of a thin, rapidly rotating, nuclear disk extending to ~1 kpc. This nuclear disk is orientated perpendicular to the bar and is likely to be composed of stars on x2 orbits. The gas in the simulation is able to fall onto such orbits, leading to stars populating an orthogonal disk.
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In Debattista et al. (2015), we proposed that a kiloparsec-scale nuclear disc is responsible for the high-velocity secondary peak in the stellar line-of-sight velocity distributions (LOSVDs) seen at positive longitudes in the bulge by the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE). Here, we make further qualitative but distinctive predictions of the kinematic properties of a nuclear disc, including for the LOSVDs at negative longitudes (which APOGEE-2 will observe) and examine the proper motions throughout the disc. Since a nuclear ring is also able to produce similar high-velocity LOSVD peaks, we present predictions for the proper motion signatures which distinguish between a nuclear disc and a nuclear ring. We also demonstrate that the stars in a nuclear disc, which would be on x2 orbits perpendicular to the bar, can remain on these orbits for a long time and can therefore be old. We show that such (old) nuclear discs of comparable size exist in external galaxies.
By means of idealized, dissipationless N-body simulations which follow the formation and subsequent buckling of a stellar bar, we study the characteristics of boxy/peanut-shaped bulges and compare them with the properties of the stellar populations in the Milky Way bulge. The main results of our modeling, valid for the general family of boxy/peanut shaped bulges, are the following: (i) because of the spatial redistribution in the disk initiated at the epoch of bar formation, stars from the innermost regions to the outer Lindblad resonance of the stellar bar are mapped into a boxy bulge; (ii) the contribution of stars to the local bulge density depends on their birth radius: stars born in the innermost disk tend to dominate the innermost regions of the boxy bulge, while stars originating closer to the OLR are preferentially found in the outer regions of the boxy/peanut structure; (iii) stellar birth radii are imprinted in the bulge kinematics, the larger the birth radii of stars ending up in the bulge, the greater their rotational support and the higher their line-of- sight velocity dispersions (but note that this last trend depends on the bar viewing angle); (iv) the higher the classical bulge-over-disk ratio, the larger its fractional contribution of stars at large vertical distance from the galaxy mid-plane. (ABRIDGED) On the basis of their chemical and kinematic characteristics, the results of our modeling suggests that the populations A, B and C, as defined by the ARGOS survey, can be associated, respectively, with the inner thin disk, to the young thick and to the old thick disk, following the nomenclature recently suggested for stars in the solar neighborhood by Haywood et al. (2013).
We provide new insight on the origin of the cold high-V$_{rm los}$ peaks ($sim$200 kms$^{-1}$) in the Milky Way bulge discovered in the APOGEE commissioning data citep{Nidever2012}. Here we show that such kinematic behaviour present in the field regions towards the Galactic bulge is not likely associated with orbits that build the boxy/peanut (B/P) bulge. To this purpose, a new set of test particle simulations of a kinematically cold stellar disk evolved in a 3D steady-state barred Milky Way galactic potential, has been analysed in detail. Especially bar particles trapped into the bar are identified through the orbital Jacobi energy $E_{J}$, which allows us to identify the building blocks of the B/P feature and investigate their kinematic properties. Finally, we present preliminary results showing that the high-V$_{rm los}$ features observed towards the Milky Way bulge are a natural consequence of a large-scale textit{midplane} particle structure, which is unlikely associated with the Galactic bar.
We confirm, quantify, and provide a table of the coherent velocity substructure of the Milky Way disk within 2 kpc of the Sun towards the Galactic anticenter, with 0.2 kpc resolution. We use the radial velocities of ~340,000 F-type stars obtained with the Guoshoujing Telescope (also known as the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, LAMOST), and proper motions derived from the PPMXL catalog. The PPMXL proper motions have been corrected to remove systematic errors by subtracting the average proper motions of galaxies and QSOs that have been confirmed in the LAMOST spectroscopic survey, and that are within 2.5 degrees of the stars position. We provide the resulting table of systematic offsets derived from the PPMXL proper motion measurements of extragalactic objects identified in the LAMOST spectroscopic survey. Using the corrected phase- space stellar sample, we find statistically significant deviations in the bulk disk velocity of 20 km/s or more in the three dimensional velocities of Galactic disk stars. The bulk velocity varies significantly over length scales of half a kpc or less. The rotation velocity of the disk increases by 20 km/s from the Suns position to 1.5 kpc outside the solar circle. Disk stars in the second quadrant, within 1 kpc of the Sun, are moving radially towards the Galactic center and vertically towards a point a few tenths of a kpc above the Galactic plane; looking down on the disk, the stars appear to move in a circular streaming motion with a radius of order 1 kpc.
We compare the star-formation history and dynamics of the Milky Way (MW) with the properties of distant disk galaxies. During the first ~4 Gyr of its evolution, the MW formed stars with a high star-formation intensity (SFI), Sigma_SFR~0.6 Msun/yr/kpc2 and as a result, generated outflows and high turbulence in its interstellar medium. This intense phase of star formation corresponds to the formation of the thick disk. The formation of the thick disk is a crucial phase which enables the MW to have formed approximately half of its total stellar mass by z~1 which is similar to MW progenitor galaxies selected by abundance matching. This agreement suggests that the formation of the thick disk may be a generic evolutionary phase in disk galaxies. Using a simple energy injection-kinetic energy relationship between the 1-D velocity dispersion and SFI, we can reproduce the average perpendicular dispersion in stellar velocities of the MW with age. This relationship, its inferred evolution, and required efficiency are consistent with observations of galaxies from z~0-3. The high turbulence generated by intense star formation naturally resulted in a thick disk, a chemically well-mixed ISM, and is the mechanism that links the evolution of MW to the observed characteristics of distant disk galaxies.
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