Discovery of the local counterpart of disc galaxies at z > 4: The oldest thin disc of the Milky Way using Gaia-RVS

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Hauptverfasser: Nepal, Samir, Chiappini, Cristina, Queiroz, Anna B. A., Guiglion, Guillaume, Montalbán, Josefina, Steinmetz, Matthias, Miglio, Andrea, Khalatyan, Arman
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Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Nepal, Samir
Chiappini, Cristina
Queiroz, Anna B. A.
Guiglion, Guillaume
Montalbán, Josefina
Steinmetz, Matthias
Miglio, Andrea
Khalatyan, Arman
author_facet Nepal, Samir
Chiappini, Cristina
Queiroz, Anna B. A.
Guiglion, Guillaume
Montalbán, Josefina
Steinmetz, Matthias
Miglio, Andrea
Khalatyan, Arman
contents JWST has recently detected numerous disc galaxies at high-redshifts and there have been observations of cold disc galaxies at z > 4 with ALMA. In the Milky Way, recent studies find metal-poor stars in cold disc orbits, suggesting an ancient disc. We investigated a sample of 565,606 stars from the hybrid-CNN analysis of the Gaia-DR3 RVS stars. The sample contains 8,500 stars with [Fe/H]<-1. For a subset of ~200,000 MSTO and subgiant stars we computed distances and ages using the StarHorse code with a mean precision of 1% and 12%, respectively. First, we confirm the existence of metal-poor stars in thin disc orbits - over 50% are older than 13 Gyr. Second, we report the discovery of the oldest thin disc of the Milky Way(MW), which extends across a wide range of metallicities, from metal-poor to super-solar stars. The metal-poor stars in disc orbits manifest as a readily visible tail of the metallicity distribution. The high-[α/Fe] thick disc exhibits a vertical velocity dispersion of 35 km/s, while the thin disc shows 10 to 15 km/s lower at similar ages. Our old thin disc $σ_{V_z}$ appears similar to those estimated for the high-z disc galaxies. Third, we extend the [Y/Mg] chemical clock to the oldest ages and estimate a slope of -0.038 dex/Gyr. Finally, we confirm our discovery by showing that the splash includes high- and low-[α/Fe] populations that are both old and extends to super-solar [Fe/H]. We find about 6 to 10% of the old thin disc was heated to thick disc orbits with the youngest splashed stars being 9 to 10 Gyrs. We conclude the MW thin disc forms <1 billion years from Big Bang, building up inside-out, preceding earlier estimates by about 4-5 billion years. Considering a massive merger event such as the GSE, a Splash is expected - we find a portion of the old thin disc is heated to thick disc velocities and the Splash extends to super-solar [Fe/H] regimes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_00561
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discovery of the local counterpart of disc galaxies at z > 4: The oldest thin disc of the Milky Way using Gaia-RVS
Nepal, Samir
Chiappini, Cristina
Queiroz, Anna B. A.
Guiglion, Guillaume
Montalbán, Josefina
Steinmetz, Matthias
Miglio, Andrea
Khalatyan, Arman
Astrophysics of Galaxies
JWST has recently detected numerous disc galaxies at high-redshifts and there have been observations of cold disc galaxies at z > 4 with ALMA. In the Milky Way, recent studies find metal-poor stars in cold disc orbits, suggesting an ancient disc. We investigated a sample of 565,606 stars from the hybrid-CNN analysis of the Gaia-DR3 RVS stars. The sample contains 8,500 stars with [Fe/H]<-1. For a subset of ~200,000 MSTO and subgiant stars we computed distances and ages using the StarHorse code with a mean precision of 1% and 12%, respectively. First, we confirm the existence of metal-poor stars in thin disc orbits - over 50% are older than 13 Gyr. Second, we report the discovery of the oldest thin disc of the Milky Way(MW), which extends across a wide range of metallicities, from metal-poor to super-solar stars. The metal-poor stars in disc orbits manifest as a readily visible tail of the metallicity distribution. The high-[α/Fe] thick disc exhibits a vertical velocity dispersion of 35 km/s, while the thin disc shows 10 to 15 km/s lower at similar ages. Our old thin disc $σ_{V_z}$ appears similar to those estimated for the high-z disc galaxies. Third, we extend the [Y/Mg] chemical clock to the oldest ages and estimate a slope of -0.038 dex/Gyr. Finally, we confirm our discovery by showing that the splash includes high- and low-[α/Fe] populations that are both old and extends to super-solar [Fe/H]. We find about 6 to 10% of the old thin disc was heated to thick disc orbits with the youngest splashed stars being 9 to 10 Gyrs. We conclude the MW thin disc forms <1 billion years from Big Bang, building up inside-out, preceding earlier estimates by about 4-5 billion years. Considering a massive merger event such as the GSE, a Splash is expected - we find a portion of the old thin disc is heated to thick disc velocities and the Splash extends to super-solar [Fe/H] regimes.
title Discovery of the local counterpart of disc galaxies at z > 4: The oldest thin disc of the Milky Way using Gaia-RVS
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.00561