Related papers: Kinematical & Chemical Characteristics of the Thin…
We have investigated the abundance of several chemical elements in two large stellar samples kinematically representative of the thin and the thick disks of the Galaxy. Chemical, kinematical and age data have been collected from high…
We analyse the phase-space structure of simulated thick discs that are the result of a significant merger between a disc galaxy and a satellite. Our main goal is to establish what would be the characteristic imprints of a merger origin for…
The history of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy is found in the spatial distribution, kinematics, age and chemical abundance distributions of long-lived stars. From this fossil record one can in principle extract the star…
We discuss recent observations of stars located close to the symmetry plane of the Milky Way, and examine them in the context of theories of Galaxy formation and evolution. The kinematics, ages, and compositions of thin disk stars in the…
The Milky Way serves as a template for understanding the formation and evolution of late-type massive disk galaxies since we can obtain detailed chemical and kinematic information for large samples of individual stars. However, the early…
In this review, we present a brief description of observational efforts to understand the Galactic thick disk and its relation to the other Galactic components. This review primarily focused on elemental abundance patterns of the thick disk…
Invited Review at IAU Symp 164 on Stellar Populations. The Milky Way Galaxy offers a unique opportunity for testing theories of galaxy formation and evolution. The study of the spatial distribution, kinematics and chemical abundances of…
The chemical abundances in the atmosphere of a star provide unique information about the gas from which that star formed, and, modulo processes that are not important for the vast majority of stars, such as mass transfer in close binary…
Thick disks appear to be common in external large spiral galaxies and our own Milky Way also hosts one. The existence of a thick disk is possibly directly linked to the formation history of the host galaxy and if its properties is known it…
The recently emerging conviction that thick disks are prevalent in disk galaxies, and their seemingly ubiquitous old ages, means that the formation of the thick disk, perhaps more than any other component, holds the key to unravelling the…
We examine the chemical and dynamical structure in the solar neighbourhood of a model Galaxy that is the endpoint of a simulation of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way in the presence of radial mixing of stars and gas. Although the…
The prevailing model of galaxy formation proposes that galaxies like the Milky Way are built through a series of mergers with smaller galaxies over time. However, the exact details of the Milky Way's assembly history remain uncertain. In…
We adopt a scenario in which the Galactic thick disk was formed by minor merging between the first generation of the Galactic thin disk (FGTD) and a dwarf galaxy about 9 Gyr ago and thereby investigate chemical and dynamical properties of…
[Abridged] In this first paper of this series, we present a new approach for studying the chemo-dynamical evolution in disk galaxies, which consists of fusing disk chemical evolution models with compatible numerical simulations of galactic…
The stellar populations of the stellar halo and of the thick disk of the Milky Way reveal much about the merging history that our Galaxy, a typical large disk galaxy, has experienced. Our current understanding, described here, implies a…
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is a benchmark for understanding disk galaxies. It is the only galaxy whose formation history can be studied using the full distribution of stars from white dwarfs to supergiants. The oldest components provide us…
The velocity dispersions of stars near the Sun are known to increase with stellar age, but age can be difficult to determine so a proxy like the abundance of alpha elements (e.g., Mg) with respect to iron, [alpha/Fe], is used. Here we…
The current knowledge of the abundance structure in the Milky Way is reviewed. Special emphasis is put on recent results for stars with kinematics typical of the thin and the thick disks, respectively, and how these results can, apart from…
Thick disks are common in spiral and S0 galaxies and seem to be an inherent part of galaxy formation and evolution. Our own Milky Way is host to an old thick disk. The stars associated with this disk are enhanced in the alpha-elements as…
We analyse the chemical properties of a set of solar vicinity stars, and show that the small dispersion in abundances of \alpha-elements at all ages provides evidence that the SFH has been uniform throughout the thick disk. In the context…