Related papers: Summary Talk
Very old halo stars were previously found to show at least four different abundance 'anomalies', which models of fast rotating massive stars (spinstars) can successfully account for: rise of N/O and C/O, low 12C/13C and a primary-like…
Galaxies are composed of baryonic stars and gas embedded in dark matter halos. Here I briefly review two aspects of the connection between baryons and their halos. (1) The observed baryon content of galaxies falls short of the cosmic baryon…
A linear [Fe/H]-[O/H] relation is found for different stellar populations in the Galaxy (halo, thick disk, thin disk) from a data sample obtained in a recent investigation (Ram{\'\i}rez et al. 2013). These correlations support previous…
Dramatic recent progress in understanding galactic chemical evolution (GCE) has been driven partly by direct observations of the distant past with HST and JWST of stellar abundances from giant high-resolution spectroscopic surveys (APOGEE,…
Small stellar systems like dwarf galaxies are suggested to be the main building blocks of our Galaxy by numerical simulations in Lambda CDM models. The existence of star streams like Sagittarius tidal stream indicates that dwarf galaxies…
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…
Galactic bulges are central to understanding galaxy formation and evolution. Here we report on recent studies using micro-lensing events to obtain spectra of high resolution and moderately high signal-to-noise ratios of dwarf stars in the…
The Milky Way harbours two disks that appear distinct concerning scale-heights, kinematics, and elemental abundance patterns. Recent years have seen a surge of studies of the elemental abundance trends in the disks using high resolution…
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…
Mergers of compact binaries (of a neutron star and another neutron star or a black hole, NSMs) are suggested to be the promising astrophysical site of the r-process. While the average coalescence timescale of NSMs appears to be > 100 Myr,…
Dwarf galaxies like Sagittarius (Sgr) provide a unique window into the early stages of galactic chemical evolution, particularly through their metal-poor stars. By studying the chemical abundances of stars in the Sgr core and tidal streams,…
The history of the Milky Way Galaxy is written in the properties of its stellar populations. Here we analyse stars observed as part of surveys of local dwarf spheroidal galaxies, but which from their kinematics are highly probable to be…
We show that the Galactic thick disk reaches at least solar metallicities, and that it experienced strong chemical enrichment during a period of ~3 Gyr, ending around 8-9 Gyr ago. This finding puts further constraints on the relation and…
The synthesis of $r$-process elements is known to involve extremely energetic explosions. At the same time, recent observations find significant $r$-process enrichment even in extremely small ultra-faint dwarf (UFD) galaxies. This raises…
Based on high-resolution spectra obtained during gravitational microlensing events we present a detailed elemental abundance analysis of 32 dwarf and subgiant stars in the Galactic bulge. [ABRIDGED], we now have 58 microlensed bulge dwarfs…
The evolution of C and O abundances in the Milky Way can impose strong constraints on stellar nucleosynthesis and help understanding the formation and evolution of our Galaxy. The aim is to review the measured C and O abundances in the disk…
I discuss the chemical and spectrophotometric evolution of galaxies over cosmological timescales and present a first attempt to treat both aspects in a chemically consistent way. In our evolutionary synthesis approach, we account for the…
In the environments where the abundance of heavy elements is low, rare events are expected to impact the chemical enrichment. Dwarf galaxies have small masses, low average metallicities and in general low star formation rates, and thus…
The advent of Gaia's 2nd data release in combination with large spectroscopic surveys are revolutionizing our understanding of the Galaxy. Thanks to these and the knowledge accumulated thus far, a more mature picture of the evolution of the…
[ABRIDGED] In order to trace the origin and evolution of carbon in the Galactic disk we have determined carbon abundances in 51 nearby F and G dwarf stars. The sample is divided into two kinematically distinct subsamples with 35 and 16…