The Emergence of the Thick Disk in a CDM Universe
Astrophysics
2009-11-10 v1
Abstract
The disk galaxy simulated using our chemo-dynamical galaxy formation code, GCD+, is shown to have a thick disk component. This is evidenced by the velocity dispersion versus age relation for solar neighbourhood stars, which clearly shows an abrupt increase in velocity dispersion at lookback time of approximately 8 Gyrs, and is in excellent agreement with observation. These thick disk stars are formed from gas which is accreted to the galaxy during a chaotic period of hierarchical clustering at high redshift. This formation scenario is shown to be consistent with observations of both the Milky Way and extragalactic thick disks.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0405306,
title = {The Emergence of the Thick Disk in a CDM Universe},
author = {Chris B. Brook and Daisuke Kawata and Brad K. Gibson and Ken C. Freeman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0405306},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
accepted for publication in ApJ