Chemodynamics of the Milky Way - I. The first year of APOGEE data

By Friedrich Anders, C. Chiappini, B. Santiago, H. Rocha-Pinto, Léo Girardi, Luiz Nicolaci da Costa, Marcio A. G. Maia, Matthias Steinmetz, I. Minchev, M. Schultheis and 31 more. 2013

160 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the chemo-kinematic properties of the Milky Way disc by exploring the first year of data from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), and compare our results to smaller optical high-resolution samples in the literature, as well as results from lower resolution surveys such as GCS, SEGUE and RAVE. We start by selecting a high-quality sample in terms of chemistry ($\sim$ 20.000 stars) and, after computing distances and orbital parameters for this sample, we employ a number of useful subsets to formulate constraints on Galactic chemical and chemodynamical evolution processes in the Solar neighbourhood and beyond (e.g., metallicity distributions -- MDFs, [$\alpha$/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] diagrams, and abundance gradients). Our red giant sample spans distances as large as 10 kpc from the Sun. We find remarkable agreement between the recently published local (d $<$ 100 pc) high-resolution high-S/N HARPS sample and our local HQ sample (d $<$ 1 kpc). The local MDF peaks slightly below solar metallicity, and exhibits an extended tail towards [Fe/H] $= -$1, whereas a sharper cut-off is seen at larger metallicities. The APOGEE data also confirm the existence of a gap in the [$\alpha$/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] abundance diagram. When expanding our sample to cover three different Galactocentric distance bins, we find the high-[$\alpha$/Fe] stars to be rare towards the outer zones, as previously suggested in the literature. For the gradients in [Fe/H] and [$\alpha$/Fe], measured over a range of 6 $ < $ R $ <$ 11 kpc in Galactocentric distance, we find a good agreement with the gradients traced by the GCS and RAVE dwarf samples. For stars with 1.5 $<$ z $<$ 3 kpc, we find a positive metallicity gradient and a negative gradient in [$\alpha$/Fe].

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6f6ac3af37546debf08cdb0bb524c6ba93be0452

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. I. Minchev
2. Hans-Walter Rix
3. Jo Bovy
4. P. Hopkins
5. L. Hernquist
6. M. Martig
7. Volker Springel
8. C. Chiappini

In Instrumentation

1. I. Minchev
2. Hans-Walter Rix
3. P. Hopkins
4. M. Martig
5. Jo Bovy
6. L. Hernquist
7. C. Chiappini
8. D. Keres̆

Citations in the corpus

• Estimating stellar birth radii and the time evolution of Milky Way’s ISM metallicity gradient (2018, methodology): “It was indeed found that the metallicity gradient is negative for all ages, in the range 6 < r < 15 kpc and |z| < 0.3 kpc, although the total population shows inversion at high |z| (e.g., Anders et al. 2014).”
• TRACING CHEMICAL EVOLUTION OVER THE EXTENT OF THE MILKY WAY'S DISK WITH APOGEE RED CLUMP STARS (2014, methodology): “The clear [α/Fe] bimodality in the APOGEE data was first shown by Anders et al. (2014) using the first year data, and we confirm this result with our cleaner red clump sample and find that it is not caused by selection effects (Figure 9).”
• Metallicity distributions of mono-age stellar populations of the Galactic disc from the LAMOST Galactic spectroscopic surveys (2018, methodology): “5) using 69,919 APOGEE red-giant stars.”
• Constraining the Milky Way assembly history with Galactic Archaeology (2016, methodology): “Such an age drop of mean stellar age at high distances, |z|, from the disc midplane explains the inversion in [α/Fe] gradients with increasing mean z found by Anders et al. (2014) in APOGEE data.”
• PLATO as it is: a legacy mission for Galactic archaeology (2017, unknown): “The radial and vertical variations of these two relations are reflected in the chemical abundance gradients in the disk (e.g., Anders et al. 2014, 2017a; Boeche et al. 2013, 2014; Cheng et al. 2012; Hayden et al. 2014; Jacobson et al. 2016; Mikolaitis et al. 2014), as well as on variations of…”
• Constraining the thick disc formation scenario of the Milky Way (2014, unknown): “In this scenario the thick-disc population is well mixed such that no radial metallicity gradient should be present in the high α sequences, as is observed in recent spectroscopic surveys (Cheng et al. 2012; Anders et al. 2014; Hayden et al. 2014; RecioBlanco et al. 2014).”
• Chemodynamical evolution of the Milky Way disk II: Variations with Galactic radius and height above the disk plane (2014, background): “Several studies of the [Fe/H]-[α/Fe] plane (e.g., Bensby et al. 2011; Cheng et al. 2012a; Anders et al. 2014) have shown that the number of high-[α/Fe] metal-poor stars d creases strongly in the outer disk.”
• THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MONO-ABUNDANCE AND MONO-AGE STELLAR POPULATIONS IN THE MILKY WAY DISK (2016, background): “A similar argument goes for the inversion of [α/Fe] seen in observations (Boeche et al. 2013; Anders et al. 2014).”
• THE APOGEE RED-CLUMP CATALOG: PRECISE DISTANCES, VELOCITIES, AND HIGH-RESOLUTION ELEMENTAL ABUNDANCES OVER A LARGE AREA OF THE MILKY WAY'S DISK (2014, background): “…to the scale over which significant gradients in kinematics (HI streaming motions over ≈ 1 kpc; e.g., Levine et al. 2008), metallicity (≈ −0.1 dex kpc−1 near the plane; e.g., Anders et al. 2014; Hayden et al. 2014; see also § 7), or level of alphaenhancement exist (e.g., Bovy et al. 2012d).”
• Impacts of a flaring star-forming disc and stellar radial mixing on the vertical metallicity gradient (2016, background): “For example, from MNRAS 000, 1–12 (2016) the APOGEE data Anders et al. (2014) showed almost flat radial [α/M] gradient at |zmax| < 0.4 kpc, but a clear negative [α/M] gradient at 1.5 < |zmax| < 3 kpc, where zmax is the maximum vertical amplitude from their orbital analysis.”
• THE STELLAR POPULATION STRUCTURE OF THE GALACTIC DISK (2015, background): “Radial population changes in the Galactic disk have traditionally been characterized by a metallicity gradient, taking at each radius the mean over the complex abundance distribution (e.g., Audouze & Tinsley 1976; Chen et al. 2003; Anders et al. 2014; Hayden et al. 2014).”
• StarHorse : a Bayesian tool for determining stellar masses, ages, distances, and extinctions for field stars (2017, methodology): “…in turn, may be used in connection to APOGEE abundances and radial velocities, to study the properties of the main Galactic populations, and their spatial variations, as was previously done by Anders et al. (2014), and Fernández-Alvar et al. (2016) using distances from Santiago et al. (2016).”
• CHEMICAL CARTOGRAPHY WITH APOGEE: METALLICITY DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS AND THE CHEMICAL STRUCTURE OF THE MILKY WAY DISK (2015, methodology): “…than most stars in the solar neighborhood (e.g., Bensby et al. 2003, 2011; Allende Prieto et al. 2006; Bovy et al. 2012c; Cheng et al. 2012a; Anders et al. 2014), although there do exist thick-disk stars with solar-[α/Fe] abundances and supersolar metallicities (Bensby et al. 2003, 2005,…”
• Reconstructing the star formation history of the Milky Way disc(s) from chemical abundances (2014, background): “14 of Anders et al. 2014).”
• The structure and dynamical evolution of the stellar disc of a simulated Milky Way-mass galaxy (2016, background): “…d[M/H]/dR ∼ −0.06dexkpc−1 in MW stars near the disk plane (height |Z| < 0.5kpc), with d[M/H]/dR gradually flattening above the mid-plane and turning positive at and above |Z| > 1.5kpc (e.g. Cheng et al. 2012; Boeche et al. 2013, 2014; Anders et al. 2014; Hayden et al. 2014; Mikolaitis et al. 2014).”