English

Structural Parameters of the Thin Disk Population from Evolved Stars in Solar Neighborhood

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-01-09 v1

Abstract

This study investigates the structural parameters of the thin-disk population by analyzing the spatial distribution of evolved stars in the solar neighbourhood. From the Gaia\it Gaia Data Release 3 database, about 39.1 million stars within 1 kpc and with relative parallax errors σϖ/ϖ0.10\sigma_{\varpi}/\varpi\leq 0.10 were selected. The photometric data was corrected for extinction using a Galactic dust map. The sample was refined by considering the color-magnitude region MG×(GBPGRP)0M_{\rm G}\times (G_{\rm BP}-G_{\rm RP})_0 associated with evolved stars, applying a stricter parallax error limit of σϖ/ϖ0.02\sigma_{\varpi}/\varpi\leq 0.02, and yielding 671,600 stars. The star sample was divided into 36 regions based on their Galactic coordinates, with evolved stars in the absolute magnitude range of 1<MG (mag)4-1< M_{\rm G}~{\rm (mag)}\leq 4 further split into five one-unit magnitude intervals. This led to 180 subgroups whose space density profiles were modelled using a single-component Galaxy model. The analysis shows that the space densities are in agreement with the literature and that the scale heights vary with 200<H (pc)<600200<H~{\rm (pc)}<600 interval to their absolute magnitudes. Red clump stars in the solar neighbourhood were also estimated to have a scale height of 295±10295\pm10 pc. These findings indicate that evolved stars with bright absolute magnitudes originate from the evolution of the early spectral-type stars with short scale height, while fainter ones come from the evolution of the intermediate spectral-type stars with large scale height, suggesting variations in scale height reflect the contribution of Galactic evolution processes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.04079,
  title  = {Structural Parameters of the Thin Disk Population from Evolved Stars in Solar Neighborhood},
  author = {S. Iyisan and S. Bilir and O. Onal Tas and O. Plevne},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.04079},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, including 9 figures and 2 tables, accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal