English

Investigating lower limit of metallicity for Galactic thin disk

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2024-12-10 v1

Abstract

We explore the metal-poor regime of the Galactic disk on the distribution of stars in the [α\alpha/M]-VϕV_{\phi} plane, to identify the most metal-poor thin disk (MPTnD) stars belonging to the low-α\alpha sequence. Chemical abundances and velocities of sample stars are either taken or derived from APOGEE DR17 and Gaia DR3 catalogs. We find the existence of a well-separated extension of the kinematically thin disk stars in the metallicity range of -1.2 <<[M/H]<< -0.8 dex. Based on two-by-two distributions of [Mg/Mn], [Al/Fe] and [C+N/Fe], we further confirmed 56 high-possibility metal-poor thin disk (HP-MPTnD) giant stars and suggested the lower metallicity limit of the thin disk below -0.95 dex. A comparative analysis of HP-MPTnD sample with other Galactic components revealed its chemo-dynamical similarities with canonical thin disk stars. These low-α\alpha metal-poor stars are predominantly located in the outer disk region and formed in the early stage of the formation of thin disk. Their existence provides compelling support for the two-infall model of the Milky way's disk formation. Moreover, these stars impose observational constraints on the timing and metallicity of the second gas infall event.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.06187,
  title  = {Investigating lower limit of metallicity for Galactic thin disk},
  author = {Guozhen Hu and Zhengyi Shao and Erbil Gugercinoglu and Wenyuan Cui},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.06187},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

11pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ