Spiral and bar driven peculiar velocities in Milky Way sized galaxy simulations

We investigate the kinematic signatures induced by spiral and bar structure in a set of simulations of Milky Way-sized spiral disc galaxies. The set includes test particle simulations that follow a quasi-stationary density wave-like scenario with rigidly rotating spiral arms, and $N$-body simulations that host a bar and transient, co-rotating spiral arms. From a location similar to that of the Sun, we calculate the radial, tangential and line-of-sight peculiar velocity fields of a patch of the disc and quantify the fluctuations by computing the power spectrum from a two-dimensional Fourier transform. We find that the peculiar velocity power spectrum of the simulation with a bar and transient, co-rotating spiral arms fits very well to that of APOGEE red clump star data, while the quasi-stationary density wave spiral model without a bar does not. We determine that the power spectrum is sensitive to the number of spiral arms, spiral arm pitch angle and position with respect to the spiral arm. However, it is necessary to go beyond the line of sight velocity field in order to distinguish fully between the various spiral models with this method. We compute the power spectrum for different regions of the spiral discs, and discuss the application of this analysis technique to external galaxies.

Chemical Cartography with APOGEE: Metallicity Distribution Functions and the Chemical Structure of the Milky Way Disk

Using a sample of 69,919 red giants from the SDSS-III/APOGEE Data Release 12, we measure the distribution of stars in the [$alpha$/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] plane and the metallicity distribution functions (MDF) across an unprecedented volume of the Milky Way disk, with radius $3<R<15$ kpc and height $|z|<2$ kpc. Stars in the inner disk ($R<5$ kpc) lie along a single track in [$alpha$/Fe] vs. [Fe/H], starting with $alpha$-enhanced, metal-poor stars and ending at [$alpha$/Fe]$sim0$ and [Fe/H]$sim+0.4$. At larger radii we find two distinct sequences in [$alpha$/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] space, with a roughly solar-$alpha$ sequence that spans a decade in metallicity and a high-$alpha$ sequence that merges with the low-$alpha$ sequence at super-solar [Fe/H]. The location of the high-$alpha$ sequence is nearly constant across the disk, however there are very few high-$alpha$ stars at $R>11$ kpc. The peak of the midplane MDF shifts to lower metallicity at larger $R$, reflecting the Galactic metallicity gradient. Most strikingly, the shape of the midplane MDF changes systematically with radius, with a negatively skewed distribution at $3<R<7$ kpc, to a roughly Gaussian distribution at the solar annulus, to a positively skewed shape in the outer Galaxy. For stars with $|z|>1$ kpc or [$alpha$/Fe]$>0.18$, the MDF shows little dependence on $R$. The positive skewness of the outer disk MDF may be a signature of radial migration; we show that blurring of stellar populations by orbital eccentricities is not enough to explain the reversal of MDF shape but a simple model of radial migration can do so.

Tracing chemical evolution over the extent of the Milky Ways Disk with APOGEE Red Clump Stars

We employ the first two years of data from the near-infrared, high-resolution SDSS-III/APOGEE spectroscopic survey to investigate the distribution of metallicity and alpha-element abundances of stars over a large part of the Milky Way disk. Using a sample of ~10,000 kinematically-unbiased red-clump stars with ~5% distance accuracy as tracers, the [alpha/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] distribution of this sample exhibits a bimodality in [alpha/Fe] at intermediate metallicities, -0.9<[Fe/H]<-0.2, but at higher metallicities ([Fe/H]=+0.2) the two sequences smoothly merge. We investigate the effects of the APOGEE selection function and volume filling fraction and find that these have little qualitative impact on the alpha-element abundance patterns. The described abundance pattern is found throughout the range 5<R<11 kpc and 0<|Z|<2 kpc across the Galaxy. The [alpha/Fe] trend of the high-alpha sequence is surprisingly constant throughout the Galaxy, with little variation from region to region (~10%). Using simple galactic chemical evolution models we derive an average star formation efficiency (SFE) in the high-alpha sequence of ~4.5E-10 1/yr, which is quite close to the nearly-constant value found in molecular-gas-dominated regions of nearby spirals. This result suggests that the early evolution of the Milky Way disk was characterized by stars that shared a similar star formation history and were formed in a well-mixed, turbulent, and molecular-dominated ISM with a gas consumption timescale (1/SFE) of ~2 Gyr. Finally, while the two alpha-element sequences in the inner Galaxy can be explained by a single chemical evolutionary track this cannot hold in the outer Galaxy, requiring instead a mix of two or more populations with distinct enrichment histories.

The APOGEE red-clump catalog: Precise distances, velocities, and high-resolution elemental abundances over a large area of the Milky Ways disk

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey IIIs Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) is a high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopic survey covering all of the major components of the Galaxy, including the dust-obscured regions of the inner Milky Way disk and bulge. Here we present a sample of 10,341 likely red-clump stars (RC) from the first two years of APOGEE operations, selected based on their position in color-metallicity-surface-gravity-effective-temperature space using a new method calibrated using stellar-evolution models and high-quality asteroseismology data. The narrowness of the RC locus in color-metallicity-luminosity space allows us to assign distances to the stars with an accuracy of 5 to 10%. The sample extends to typical distances of about 3 kpc from the Sun, with some stars out to 8 kpc, and spans a volume of approximately 100 kpc^3 over 5 kpc <~ R <~ 14 kpc, |Z| <~ 2 kpc, and -15 deg <~ Galactocentric azimuth <~ 30 deg. The APOGEE red-clump (APOGEE-RC) catalog contains photometry from 2MASS, reddening estimates, distances, line-of-sight velocities, stellar parameters and elemental abundances determined from the high-resolution APOGEE spectra, and matches to major proper motion catalogs. We determine the survey selection function for this data set and discuss how the RC selection samples the underlying stellar populations. We use this sample to limit any azimuthal variations in the median metallicity within the ~45 degree-wide azimuthal region covered by the current sample to be <= 0.02 dex, which is more than an order of magnitude smaller than the radial metallicity gradient. This result constrains coherent non-axisymmetric flows within a few kpc from the Sun.

Chemical Cartography with APOGEE: Large-scale Mean Metallicity Maps of the Milky Way

We present Galactic mean metallicity maps derived from the first year of the SDSS-III APOGEE experiment. Mean abundances in different zones of Galactocentric radius (0 < R < 15 kpc) at a range of heights above the plane (0 < |z| < 3 kpc), are derived from a sample of nearly 20,000 stars with unprecedented coverage, including stars in the Galactic mid-plane at large distances. We also split the sample into subsamples of stars with low and high-[{alpha}/M] abundance ratios. We assess possible biases in deriving the mean abundances, and find they are likely to be small except in the inner regions of the Galaxy. A negative radial gradient exists over much of the Galaxy; however, the gradient appears to flatten for R < 6 kpc, in particular near the Galactic mid-plane and for low-[{alpha}/M] stars. At R > 6 kpc, the gradient flattens as one moves off of the plane, and is flatter at all heights for high-[{alpha}/M] stars than for low-[{alpha}/M] stars. Alternatively, these gradients can be described as vertical gradients that flatten at larger Galactocentric radius; these vertical gradients are similar for both low and high-[{alpha}/M] populations. Stars with higher [{alpha}/M] appear to have a flatter radial gradient than stars with lower [{alpha}/M]. This could suggest that the metallicity gradient has grown steeper with time or, alternatively, that gradients are washed out over time by migration of stars.

The Milky Ways circular velocity curve between 4 and 14 kpc from APOGEE data

We measure the Milky Ways rotation curve over the Galactocentric range 4 kpc <~ R <~ 14 kpc from the first year of data from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE). We model the line-of-sight velocities of 3,365 stars in fourteen fields with b = 0 deg between 30 deg < l < 210 deg out to distances of 10 kpc using an axisymmetric kinematical model that includes a correction for the asymmetric drift of the warm tracer population (sigma_R ~ 35 km/s). We determine the local value of the circular velocity to be V_c(R_0) = 218 +/- 6 km/s and find that the rotation curve is approximately flat with a local derivative between -3.0 km/s/kpc and 0.4 km/s/kpc. We also measure the Suns position and velocity in the Galactocentric rest frame, finding the distance to the Galactic center to be 8 kpc < R_0 < 9 kpc, radial velocity V_{R,sun} = -10 +/- 1 km/s, and rotational velocity V_{phi,sun} = 242^{+10}_{-3} km/s, in good agreement with local measurements of the Suns radial velocity and with the observed proper motion of Sgr A*. We investigate various systematic uncertainties and find that these are limited to offsets at the percent level, ~2 km/s in V_c. Marginalizing over all the systematics that we consider, we find that V_c(R_0) < 235 km/s at >99% confidence. We find an offset between the Suns rotational velocity and the local circular velocity of 26 +/- 3 km/s, which is larger than the locally-measured solar motion of 12 km/s. This larger offset reconciles our value for V_c with recent claims that V_c >~ 240 km/s. Combining our results with other data, we find that the Milky Ways dark-halo mass within the virial radius is ~8x10^{11} M_sun.

Think Outside the Color Box: Probabilistic Target Selection and the SDSS-XDQSO Quasar Targeting Catalog

We present the SDSS-XDQSO quasar targeting catalog for efficient flux-based quasar target selection down to the faint limit of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) catalog, even at medium redshifts (2.5 <~ z <~ 3) where the stellar contamination is significant. We build models of the distributions of stars and quasars in flux space down to the flux limit by applying the extreme-deconvolution method to estimate the underlying density. We convolve this density with the flux uncertainties when evaluating the probability that an object is a quasar. This approach results in a targeting algorithm that is more principled, more efficient, and faster than other similar methods. We apply the algorithm to derive low-redshift (z < 2.2), medium-redshift (2.2 <= z <= 3.5), and high-redshift (z > 3.5) quasar probabilities for all 160,904,060 point sources with dereddened i-band magnitude between 17.75 and 22.45 mag in the 14,555 deg^2 of imaging from SDSS Data Release 8. The catalog can be used to define a uniformly selected and efficient low- or medium-redshift quasar survey, such as that needed for the SDSS-IIIs Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey project. We show that the XDQSO technique performs as well as the current best photometric quasar-selection technique at low redshift, and outperforms all other flux-based methods for selecting the medium-redshift quasars of our primary interest. We make code to reproduce the XDQSO quasar target selection publicly available.