Metal-Poor Stars in the MW Disk: Resonant Cooling of Vertical Oscillations of Halo Stars in Barred Galaxies

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Li, Xingchen, Shlosman, Isaac, Pfenniger, Daniel, Heller, Clayton
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910541899890688
author Li, Xingchen
Shlosman, Isaac
Pfenniger, Daniel
Heller, Clayton
author_facet Li, Xingchen
Shlosman, Isaac
Pfenniger, Daniel
Heller, Clayton
contents Using numerical simulations of barred disk galaxy embedded in nonspinning and spinning dark matter (DM) halos, we present a novel mechanism of `cooling' the vertical oscillations of DM particles, which acquire the disk kinematics. The underlying mechanism consists of resonant interactions between halo particles and the stellar bar, facilitated by chaotic phase space of the system. The cooling mechanism acts both on dynamical and secular timescales, from $\sim 0.5$\,Gyr to few Gyr. The stellar bar acts to absorb kinetic energy of the vertical motions. Using Milky Way-type stellar halo, we estimate the population of metal-poor disk stars trapped by the MW disk and analyze its kinematics. We find that population of metal-poor MW disk stars with $|z|\ltorder 3$\,kpc detected by the Gaia DR3 and other surveys can have their origin in the stellar halo. The cooled population also migrates radially outwards by exchanging energy and angular momentum with the spinning bar, and prograde-moving stars have a different distribution from the retrograde ones. Next, we have calculated the ratio of the prograde-to-retrograde orbits of the cooled population and found that this ratio varies radially, with the fast-spinning stellar halo resulting in the shallower radial increase of this ratio outside of the corotation. The nonspinning stellar halo shows a monotonic increase of this ratio with radius outside the corotation. Together with analyzed radial migration of these halo stars, the cooling phenomenon of halo metal-poor stars can explain their current disk population, and has corollaries for chemical evolution of disk galaxies in general.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_06716
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Metal-Poor Stars in the MW Disk: Resonant Cooling of Vertical Oscillations of Halo Stars in Barred Galaxies
Li, Xingchen
Shlosman, Isaac
Pfenniger, Daniel
Heller, Clayton
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Using numerical simulations of barred disk galaxy embedded in nonspinning and spinning dark matter (DM) halos, we present a novel mechanism of `cooling' the vertical oscillations of DM particles, which acquire the disk kinematics. The underlying mechanism consists of resonant interactions between halo particles and the stellar bar, facilitated by chaotic phase space of the system. The cooling mechanism acts both on dynamical and secular timescales, from $\sim 0.5$\,Gyr to few Gyr. The stellar bar acts to absorb kinetic energy of the vertical motions. Using Milky Way-type stellar halo, we estimate the population of metal-poor disk stars trapped by the MW disk and analyze its kinematics. We find that population of metal-poor MW disk stars with $|z|\ltorder 3$\,kpc detected by the Gaia DR3 and other surveys can have their origin in the stellar halo. The cooled population also migrates radially outwards by exchanging energy and angular momentum with the spinning bar, and prograde-moving stars have a different distribution from the retrograde ones. Next, we have calculated the ratio of the prograde-to-retrograde orbits of the cooled population and found that this ratio varies radially, with the fast-spinning stellar halo resulting in the shallower radial increase of this ratio outside of the corotation. The nonspinning stellar halo shows a monotonic increase of this ratio with radius outside the corotation. Together with analyzed radial migration of these halo stars, the cooling phenomenon of halo metal-poor stars can explain their current disk population, and has corollaries for chemical evolution of disk galaxies in general.
title Metal-Poor Stars in the MW Disk: Resonant Cooling of Vertical Oscillations of Halo Stars in Barred Galaxies
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.06716