Related papers: Why does the Milky Way have a metallicity floor?
We use a series of high-resolution simulations of a `Milky-Way' halo coupled to semi-analytic methods to study the formation of our own Galaxy and of its stellar halo. The physical properties of our model Milky Way, as well as the age and…
The metallicity structure of the Milky Way disk stems from the chemodynamical evolutionary history of the Galaxy. We use the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array to observe ~8-10 GHz hydrogen radio…
We use a series of high-resolution N-body simulations of a `Milky-Way' halo, coupled to semi-analytic techniques, to study the formation of our own Galaxy and of its stellar halo. Our model Milky Way galaxy is a relatively young system…
Metallicities of both gas and stars decline toward large radii in spiral galaxies, a trend known as the radial metallicity gradient. We quantify the evolution of the metallicity gradient in the Milky Way as traced by APOGEE red giants with…
Metal-poor stars in the Milky Way are local relics of the epoch of the first stars and the first galaxies. However, a low metallicity does not prove that a star formed in this ancient era, as metal-poor stars form over a range of redshift…
The Galactic bulge of the Milky Way is made up of stars with a broad range of metallicity, -3.0 < [Fe/H] < 1 dex. The mean of the Metallicity Distribution Function (MDF) decreases as a function of height z from the plane and, more weakly,…
The metal-poor stars of a galaxy offer insights into that galaxy's early formation processes and accretion history. Here, we investigate whether the metal-poor stars of our Milky Way galaxy exhibit any characteristic trends in…
This paper presents theoretical star formation and chemical enrichment histories for the stellar halo of the Milky Way based on new chemodynamical modeling. The goal of this study is to assess the extent to which metal-poor stars in the…
Recent theoretical investigations have suggested that the formation of the very first stars, forming out of metal-free gas, was fundamentally different from the present-day case. In this paper, we study the effect of metallicity on the…
Theoretical and observational arguments suggest that there is a large amount of hot ($\sim 10^6$ K), diffuse gas residing in the Milky Way's halo, while its total mass and spatial distribution are still unclear. In this work, we present a…
We illustrate the formation and evolution of the Milky Way over cosmic time, utilizing a sample of 10 million red giant stars with full chemodynamical information, including metallicities and $\alpha$-abundances from low-resolution Gaia XP…
We describe an equilibrium model that links the metallicity of low-redshift galaxies to stellar evolution models. It enables the testing of different stellar initial mass functions and metal yields against observed galaxy metallicities. We…
Near-field observations may provide tight constraints - i.e. "boundary conditions" - on any model of structure formation in the Universe. Detailed observational data have long been available for the Milky Way (e.g. Freeman $\&$…
Ancient, long-lived stars remain present in all components of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Born a few hundred million after the Big Bang and during a time that marked the very beginning of the chemical evolution, these stars display very…
The early chemical evolution of the Galaxy and the Universe is vital to our understanding of a host of astrophysical phenomena. Since the most metal-poor Galactic stars (with metallicities down to [Fe/H]\sim-5.5) are relics from the…
Milky Way's hot gaseous halo extends up to the Galactic virial radius ($\sim 200$ kpc) and contains a significant component of baryon mass of the Galaxy. The halo properties can be constrained from X-ray spectroscopic observations and from…
We present predictions for the cosmic metal budget in various phases of baryons from redshift z=6-0, taken from a cosmological hydrodynamic simulation that includes a well-constrained model for enriched galactic outflows. We find that…
Gas flows play a fundamental role in galaxy formation and evolution, providing the fuel for the star formation process. These mechanisms leave an imprint in the amount of heavy elements. Thus, the analysis of this metallicity signature…
Nuclear inflows of metal-poor interstellar gas triggered by galaxy interactions can account for the systematically lower central oxygen abundances observed in local interacting galaxies. Here, we investigate the metallicity evolution of a…
We present an examination of the metallicity distribution function of the outermost stellar halo of the Galaxy based on an analysis of both local (within 4 kpc of the Sun, ~16,500 stars) and non-local (~21,700 stars) samples. These samples…