English

The Formation of the Milky Way Disk

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

We present theoretical results on the galactic abundance gradients of several chemical species for the Milky Way disk, obtained using an improved version of the two-infall model of Chiappini, Matteucci, & Gratton (1997) that incorporates a more realistic model of the galactic halo and disk. This improved model provides a satisfactory fit to the elemental abundance gradients as inferred from the observations and also to other radial features of our galaxy (i.e., gas, star formation rate and star density profiles). We discuss the implications these results may have for theories of the formation of the Milky Way and make some predictions that could in principle be tested by future observations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0009215,
  title  = {The Formation of the Milky Way Disk},
  author = {Cristina Chiappini and Francesca Matteucci and Donatella Romano},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0009215},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

2 pages, to appear in "Galaxy Disks and Disk Galaxies", J.G. Funes and E.M. Corsini, M. eds, ASP Conf.Ser., in press