Related papers: Origin and structure of the Galactic disc(s)
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…
For several decades now, open clusters have been used to study the structure and chemical evolution of the disk of our Galaxy. Due to the fact that their ages and metallicities can be determined with relatively good precision, and since…
The Galactic bulge, that is the prominent out-of-plane over-density present in the inner few kiloparsecs of the Galaxy, is a complex structure, as the morphology, kinematics, chemistry and ages of its stars indicate. To understand the…
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…
Despite the recent advancements in the field of galaxy formation and evolution, fully self-consistent simulations are still unable to make the detailed predictions necessary for the planned and ongoing large spectroscopic and photometry…
We discuss the main ingredients necessary to build models of chemical evolution of spiral galaxies and in particular the Milky Way galaxy. These ingredients include: the star formation rate, the initial mass function, the stellar yields and…
We report the first robust measurement of the Milky Way star formation history using the imprint left on chemical abundances of long-lived stars. The formation of the Galactic thick disc occurs during an intense star formation phase between…
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…
We examine a possible formation scenario of galactic thick discs with numerical simulations. Thick discs have previously been argued to form in clumpy disc phase in the high-redshift Universe, which host giant clumps of <10^9 M_sun in their…
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…
Ever since a thick disk was proposed to explain the vertical distribution of the Milky Way disk stars, its origin has been a recurrent question. We aim to answer this question by inspecting 19 disk galaxies with stellar mass greater than…
The Milky Way is a unique laboratory, where stellar properties can be measured and analyzed in detail. In particular, stars in the older populations encode information on the mechanisms that led to the formation of our Galaxy. In this…
We analyse from an observational perspective the formation history and kinematics of a Milky Way-like galaxy from a high-resolution zoom-in cosmological simulation that we compare to those of our Galaxy as seen by Gaia DR2 to better…
We analyse a set of very metal-poor stars for which accurate chemical abundances have been obtained as part of the ESO Large Program "First stars" in the light of the Gaia DR2 data. The kinematics and orbital properties of the stars in the…
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…
The separation of the Milky Way disk into a thin and thick component is supported by differences in the spatial, kinematic and metallicity distributions of their stars. These differences have led to the view that the thick disk formed early…
In chemodynamical evolution models it is usually assumed that the Milky Way galaxy forms from the inside-out implying that gas inflows onto the disk decrease with galactocentric distance. Similarly, to reproduce differences between chemical…
Models of the chemical evolution of our Galaxy are extended to include radial migration of stars and flow of gas through the disc. The models track the production of both iron and alpha elements. A model is chosen that provides an excellent…
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…