CHEMICAL CARTOGRAPHY WITH APOGEE: LARGE-SCALE MEAN METALLICITY MAPS OF THE MILKY WAY DISK

By M. Hayden, J. Holtzman, Jo Bovy, S. Majewski, Jennifer A. Johnson, C. Allende Prieto, Timothy C. Beers, K. Cunha, P. Frinchaboy, A. G. García Pérez and 20 more. 2013

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present Galactic mean metallicity maps derived from the first year of the SDSS-III APOGEE experiment. Mean abundances in different zones of projected Galactocentric radius (0 < R < 15 kpc) at a range of heights above the plane (0 < |z| < 3 kpc), are derived from a sample of nearly 20,000 giant stars with unprecedented coverage, including stars in the Galactic mid-plane at large distances. We also split the sample into subsamples of stars with low- and high-[α/M] abundance ratios. We assess possible biases in deriving the mean abundances, and find that they are likely to be small except in the inner regions of the Galaxy. A negative radial metallicity gradient exists over much of the Galaxy; however, the gradient appears to flatten for R < 6 kpc, in particular near the Galactic mid-plane and for low-[α/M] stars. At R > 6 kpc, the gradient flattens as one moves off the plane, and is flatter at all heights for high-[α/M] stars than for low-[α/M] stars. Alternatively, these gradients can be described as vertical gradients that flatten at larger Galactocentric radius; these vertical gradients are similar for both low- and high-[α/M] populations. Stars with higher [α/M] appear to have a flatter radial gradient than stars with lower [α/M]. This could suggest that the metallicity gradient has grown steeper with time or, alternatively, that gradients are washed out over time by migration of stars.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7e3886829661deec718b8e3273301c1c4da7e99b

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Citations in the corpus

TRACING CHEMICAL EVOLUTION OVER THE EXTENT OF THE MILKY WAY'S DISK WITH APOGEE RED CLUMP STARS (2014, methodology): “If the abundances of stars vary with position in the Galaxy, which has been shown by previous studies (e.g., Cheng et al. 2012; Bovy et al. 2012a; Schlesinger et al. 2012; Anders et al. 2014; Hayden et al. 2014; Boeche et al. 2014), this positional bias can create a chemical bias.”
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).”
CHEMICAL CARTOGRAPHY WITH APOGEE: METALLICITY DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS AND THE CHEMICAL STRUCTURE OF THE MILKY WAY DISK (2015, background): “The radial gradients observed in the MDF are similar to those measured across the disk in previous studies with APOGEE, as is the shift in the peak of the MDF (e.g., Anders et al. 2014; Hayden 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): “This measurement agrees with previous determinations of the metallicity gradient of intermediate-age stars (see Nordström et al. 2004; Hayden et al. 2014, and references therein) and open clusters older than ≈ 1Gyr (e.g., Yong et al. 2012; Frinchaboy et al. 2013).”
THE VERTICAL METALLICITY GRADIENT OF THE MILKY WAY DISK: TRANSITIONS IN [α/Fe] POPULATIONS (2014, methodology): “Recent work by Hayden et al. (2014) on the first year of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) III Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE; Ahn et al. 2014) experiment is quite promising; they currently have observed more than 80,000 stars over a large range of Galacto”
Chemodynamical evolution of the Milky Way disk II: Variations with Galactic radius and height above the disk plane (2014, methodology): “…gradients for field stars (all ages covering vertical distances from zero to beyond 3 kpc are being estimated thanks to the SDSS-APOGEE survey (Hayden et al., 2014; Anders et al., 2014) – an infrared high-resolution survey that can observe stellar populations very close to the galactic plane,…”
THE APOKASC CATALOG: AN ASTEROSEISMIC AND SPECTROSCOPIC JOINT SURVEY OF TARGETS IN THE KEPLER FIELDS (2014, background): “GALAH (Freeman 2012) and Gaia-ESO (Gilmore et al. 2012) are optical surveys; APOGEE (Majewski et al. 2010; Hayden et al. 2014) is instead focusing on the infrared.”
The age–metallicity structure of the Milky Way disc using APOGEE (2017, methodology): “We perform a simple cross match between our sample and the APOGEE red clump (RC) value added catalogue (VAC) (Bovy et al. 2014) and plot the red-clump derived distance (DRC) against the estimate from Hayden et al. (2014) (DMH) in Figure 3.”
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).”
The GALAH survey: observational overview and Gaia DR1 companion (2016, background): “In particular, spectroscopic stellar surveys are revolutionising our understanding of Galactic structure and evolution (e.g., Helmi 2008; Rix & Bovy 2013; Hayden et al. 2014; Hayden et al. 2015; Martig et al. 2016).”
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).”
PLATO as it is: a legacy mission for Galactic archaeology (2017, unknown): “…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 metallicities and abundance ratios with Galactocentric…”
Metallicity distributions of mono-age stellar populations of the Galactic disc from the LAMOST Galactic spectroscopic surveys (2018, background): “…open clusters (Chen, Hou & Wang 2003; Magrini et al. 2009), planetary nebulae (Costa, Uchida & Maciel 2004; Henry et al. 2010) , FGK dwarfs (Katz et al. 2011; Cheng et al. 2012; Boeche et al. 2013), (red) giant stars (Hayden et al. 2014; Boeche et al. 2014) and red clump stars (Huang et al. 2015).”