English

J-PLUS Reconstructing the Milky Way Disc's star formation history with twelve-filter photometry

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2026-02-04 v2

Abstract

Wide-field, multi-filter photometric surveys enable the reconstruction of the Milky Way's star formation history (SFH) on Galactic scales and offer new insights into disc assembly. The twelve-filter system of the Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS) is particularly suitable, as its colours trace stellar chemical abundances and help alleviate the age-metallicity degeneracy in colour-magnitude diagram fitting. We aim to recover the SFH of the Galactic disc and separate its chemically distinct components by combining J-PLUS DR3 photometry with Gaia astrometry. We also evaluate the potential of isochrone fitting to estimate stellar ages and metallicities as proxies for evolutionary trends. We fit magnitudes and parallaxes of 1.38×1061.38\times10^{6} stars using a Bayesian multiple isochrone method. The bright region of the colour-absolute-magnitude diagram (Mr4.2M_{r}\leq4.2 mag) constrains ages, while the faint region provides an empirical metallicity prior mitigating the age-metallicity degeneracy. Both PARSEC and BaSTI isochrones, in solar-scaled and α\alpha-enhanced forms, are adopted. The recovered SFH reveals two sequences: an α\alpha-enhanced population forming rapidly between 12.512.5 and 88 Gyr ago, enriching from [M/H]0.6\sim-0.6 to 0.10.1 dex; and a solar-scaled sequence emerging 8\sim8 Gyr ago, dominating after 7\sim7 Gyr with slower enrichment reaching solar metallicity by 33 Gyr. Metal-rich ([M/H]0\gtrsim0) stars are confined to zGC1\vert z_{GC}\vert\lesssim1 kpc, whereas metal-poor ([M/H]0.5\lesssim-0.5) stars reach zGC2\vert z_{GC}\vert\sim2 kpc. Simultaneous fitting of both isochrone families reveals distinct formation epochs for the thin and thick discs. J-PLUS multi-filter photometry, combined with Gaia parallaxes, mitigates age-metallicity degeneracies and enables detailed mapping of the Milky Way's temporal and chemical evolution.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.07596,
  title  = {J-PLUS Reconstructing the Milky Way Disc's star formation history with twelve-filter photometry},
  author = {J. A. Alzate-Trujillo and A. del Pino and C. López-Sanjuan and A. Hidalgo and S. Turrado-Prieto and Vinicius Placco and Paula Coelho and Haibo Yuan and Luis Lomelí-Núñez and Gustavo Bruzual and F. Jiménez-Esteban and Eduardo Telles and Borja Anguiano and Alvaro Alvarez-Candal and A. J. Cenarro and D. Cristóbal-Hornillos and C. Hernández-Monteagudo and A. Marín-Franch and M. Moles and J. Varela and H. Vázquez Ramió and J. Alcaniz and R. A. Dupke and A. Ederoclite and L. Sodré and R. E. Angulo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.07596},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysics. 16 figures, 5tables