No Arabic abstract
By combining LAMOST DR4 and Gaia DR2 common red clump stars with age and proper motion, we analyze the amplitude evolution of the stellar warp independently of any assumption with a simple model. The greatest height of the warp disk increases with Galactocentric distance in different populations and it is dependent on the age: the younger stellar populations exhibit stronger warp features than the old ones, accompanied with the warp amplitude $gamma ({rm age})$ decreasing with age and its first derivative $dot{gamma} ({rm age})$ is different from zero. The azimuth of line of nodes $phi _w$ is stable at $-$5 degree without clear time evolution, which perfectly confirms some of previous works. All these self-consistent evidences support that our Galactic warp should most likely be a long lived, but non-steady structure and not a transient one, which is supporting the warp is originated from gas infall onto the disk or other hypotheses that suppose that the warp mainly affects to the gas, and consequently younger populations tracing the gas are stronger than the older ones. In other words, the Galactic warp is induced by the non-gravitational interaction over the disk models.
Using a sample of 96,201 primary red clump (RC) stars selected from the LAMOST and Gaia surveys, we investigate the stellar structure of the Galactic disk. The sample stars show two separated sequences of high-[{alpha}/Fe] and low-[{alpha}/Fe] in the [{alpha}/Fe]-[Fe/H] plane. We divide the sample stars into five mono-abundance populations (MAPs) with different ranges of [{alpha}/Fe] and [Fe/H], named as the high-[{alpha}/Fe], high-[{alpha}/Fe] & high-[Fe/H], low-[Fe/H], solar, high-[Fe/H] MAPs respectively. We present the stellar number density distributions in the R R Z plane, and the scale heights and scale lengths of the individual MAPs by fitting their vertical and radial density profiles. The vertical profiles, the variation trend of scale height with the Galactocentric radius, indicate that there is a clear disk flare in the outer disk both for the low-[{alpha}/Fe] and the high-[{alpha}/Fe] MAPs. While the radial surface density profiles show a peak radius of 7 kpc and 8 kpc for the high-[{alpha}/Fe] and low-[{alpha}/Fe] MAPs, respectively. We also investigate the correlation between the mean rotation velocity and metallicity of the individual MAPs, and find that the mean rotation velocities are well separated and show different trends between the high-[{alpha}/Fe] and the low-[{alpha}/Fe] MAPs. At last, we discuss the character of the high-[{alpha}/Fe] & high-[Fe/H] MAP and find that it is more similar to the high-[{alpha}/Fe] MAP either in the radial and vertical density profiles or in the rotation velocity.
Using a sample of nearly 140,000 primary red clump stars selected from the LAMOST and $Gaia$ surveys, we have identified a large sample of young [$alpha$/Fe]-enhanced stars with stellar ages younger than 6.0 Gyr and [$alpha$/Fe] ratios greater than 0.15 dex. The stellar ages and [$alpha$/Fe] ratios are measured from LAMOST spectra, using a machine learning method trained with common stars in the LAMOST-APOGEE fields (for [$alpha$/Fe]) and in the LAMOST-$Kepler$ fields (for stellar age). The existence of these young [$alpha$/Fe]-enhanced stars is not expected from the classical Galactic chemical evolution models. To explore their possible origins, we have analyzed the spatial distribution, and the chemical and kinematic properties of those stars and compared the results with those of the chemically thin and thick disk populations. We find that those young [$alpha$/Fe]-enhanced stars have distributions in number density, metallicity, [C/N] abundance ratio, velocity dispersion and orbital eccentricity that are essentially the same as those of the chemically thick disk population. Our results clearly show those so-called young [$alpha$/Fe]-enhanced stars are not really young but $genuinely$ $old$. Although other alternative explanations can not be fully ruled out, our results suggest that the most possible origin of these old stars is the result of stellar mergers or mass transfer.
We present a sample of $sim$ 140,000 primary red clump (RC) stars of spectral signal-to-noise ratios higher than 20 from the LAMOST Galactic spectroscopic surveys, selected based on their positions in the metallicity-dependent effective temperature--surface gravity and color--metallicity diagrams, supervised by high-quality $Kepler$ asteroseismology data. The stellar masses and ages of those stars are further determined from the LAMOST spectra, using the Kernel Principal Component Analysis method, trained with thousands of RCs in the LAMOST-$Kepler$ fields with accurate asteroseismic mass measurements. The purity and completeness of our primary RC sample are generally higher than 80 per cent. For the mass and age, a variety of tests show typical uncertainties of 15 and 30 per cent, respectively. Using over ten thousand primary RCs with accurate distance measurements from the parallaxes of Gaia DR2, we re-calibrate the $K_{rm s}$ absolute magnitudes of primary RCs by, for the first time, considering both the metallicity and age dependencies. With the the new calibration, distances are derived for all the primary RCs, with a typical uncertainty of 5--10 per cent, even better than the values yielded by the Gaia parallax measurements for stars beyond 3--4 kpc. The sample covers a significant volume of the Galactic disk of $4 leq R leq 16$ kpc, $|Z| leq 5$ kpc, and $-20 leq phi leq 50^{circ}$. Stellar atmospheric parameters, line-of-sight velocities and elemental abundances derived from the LAMOST spectra and proper motions of Gaia DR2 are also provided for the sample stars. Finally, the selection function of the sample is carefully evaluated in the color-magnitude plane for different sky areas. The sample is publicly available.
We perform analysis of the three-dimensional kinematics of Milky Way disk stars in mono-age populations. We focus on stars between Galactocentric distances of $R=6$ and 14 ,kpc, selected from the combined LAMOST DR4 red clump giant stars and Gaia DR2 proper motion catalogue. We confirm the 3D asymmetrical motions of recent works and provide time tagging of the Galactic outer disk asymmetrical motions near the anticenter direction out to Galactocentric distances of 14,kpc. Radial Galactocentric motions reach values up to 10 km s$^{-1}$, depending on the age of the population, and present a north-south asymmetry in the region corresponding to density and velocity substructures that were sensitive to the perturbations in the early 6 ,Gyr. After that time, the disk stars in this asymmetrical structure have become kinematically hotter, and are thus not sensitive to perturbations, and we find the structure is a relatively younger population. With quantitative analysis, we find stars both above and below the plane at $Rgtrsim 9$ kpc that exhibit bending mode motions of which the sensitive duration is around 8 ,Gyr. We speculate that the in-plane asymmetries might not be mainly caused by a fast rotating bar, intrinsically elliptical outer disk, secular expansion of the disk, or streams. Spiral arm dynamics, out-of-equilibrium models, minor mergers or others are important contributors. Vertical motions might be dominated by bending and breathing modes induced by complicated inner or external perturbers. It is likely that many of these mechanisms are coupled together.
We investigate the three-dimensional asymmetrical kinematics and present time stamps of the Milky Way disk between Galactocentric distances of $R=12$ and 15 ,kpc, using red clump stars selected from the LAMOST Galactic survey, also with proper motion measurements provided by the Gaia DR2. We discover velocity substructure above the Galactic plane corresponding to a density dip found recently (south-middle opposite density structure[R $sim$ 12-15 ,kpc, Z $sim$ 1.5 ,kpc] discovered in citet{Wang2018b, Wang2018c}) in the radial and azimuthal velocity. For the vertical velocity, we detect clear vertical bulk motions or bending mode motions, which has no clear north-south asymmetry corresponding to the in-plane asymmetrical features. In the subsample of stars with different ages, we find that there is little temporal evolution of the in-plane asymmetry from 0$-$14 ,Gyr, which means the structure is sensitive to the perturbations in almost cosmic time possibly. We propose that the possible scenario of this asymmetric velocity structure is caused by the mechanisms generated in-plane, rather than vertical perturbations.