Dynamics for galactic archaeology

By J. Binney. 2013

31 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Our Galaxy is a complex machine in which several processes operate simultaneously: metal-poor gas is accreted, is chemically enriched by dying stars, and then drifts inwards, surrendering its angular momentum to stars; new stars are formed on nearly circular orbits in the equatorial plane and then diffuse through orbit space to eccentric and inclined orbits; the central stellar bar surrenders angular momentum to the surrounding disc and dark halo while acquiring angular momentum from inspiralling gas; the outer parts of the disc are constantly disturbed by satellite objects, both luminous and dark, as they sweep through pericentre. We review the conceptual tools required to bring these complex happenings into focus. Our first concern must be the construction of equilibrium models of the Galaxy, for upon these hang our hopes of determining the Galaxy’s mean gravitational field, which is required for every subsequent step. Ideally our equilibrium model should be formulated so that the secular evolution of the system can be modelled with perturbation theory. Such theory can be used to understand how stars diffuse through orbit space from either the thin gas disc in which we presume disc stars formed, or the debris of an accreted object, the presumed origin of many halo stars. Coupling this understanding to the still very uncertain predictions of the theory of stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis, we can finally extract a complete model of the chemodynamic evolution of our reasonably generic Galaxy. We discuss the relation of such a model to cosmological simulations of galaxy formation, which provide general guidance but cannot be relied on for quantitative detail.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

Yule-Simpson’s paradox in Galactic Archaeology (2019, methodology): “Galactic Archaeologists use the observed stellar kinematics, chemical abundances, and derived ages as fossil records to recover the chemo-dynamical history of the Milky Way (Freeman & Bland-Hawthorn 2002; Bland-Hawthorn et al. 2010; Rix & Bovy 2013; Binney 2013; Minchev 2016; Hogg et al. 2016).”
Star formation sustained by gas accretion (2014, background): “2013), secular evolution (Binney 2013; Kormendy 2013), dense cluster environments (Santini 2011; Kravtsov and Borgani 2012), and the growth of black holes (BH) through cosmic gas accretion (Husemann et al.”
ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS: PROPERTIES OF THE STELLAR HALO AND THE MILKY WAY MASS DISTRIBUTION (2014, background): “…globular clusters (Lin & Lynden-Bell 1982; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2013), modeling the tidal streams (Law et al. 2005; Newberg et al. 2010; Sanders & Binney 2013b; Sanderson & Helmi 2013), the HI gas rotation curve (e.g. Sofue et al. 2009), fitting a parametrized model to the available…”
Using chemical tagging to redefine the interface of the Galactic disc and halo (2015, background): “Kinematical heating and spatial disruption can be produced via several process, such as bar resonances and radial mixing, clumpiness in the gas caused, and minor mergers, to name a few (e.g. Minchev et al. 2012; Rix & Bovy 2013; Haywood et al. 2013; Sanders & Binney 2013, 2015).”
The local dark matter density (2014, methodology): “8Action modelling is also very promising for studies of tidal debris, since the locus of debris material in action space is rather simple, while in configuration space it can be rather complex (e.g. Eyre & Binney, 2011; Sanders & Binney, 2013; Lux et al., 2013).”
The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic, and Integrated Properties (2016, background): “In this context, Binney (2013) has argued that the Galaxy’s stellar populations are better described by phase-space distribution functions (DFs) that are self-consistent with the underlying gravitational potential (Section 5).”
Chemodynamical evolution of the Milky Way disk II: Variations with Galactic radius and height above the disk plane (2014, methodology): “We also refer the reader to the comprehensive recent reviews by Rix and Bovy (2013) and Binney (2013).”
THE SHAPE OF THE INNER MILKY WAY HALO FROM OBSERVATIONS OF THE PAL 5 AND GD–1 STELLAR STREAMS (2016, background): “However, GD–1 is close enough to the disk that in a more realistic potential the stream–orbit offset is larger and varies with qΦ (Sanders & Binney 2013).”