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THE DOMINANT EPOCH OF STAR FORMATION IN THE MILKY WAY FORMED THE THICK DISK
Open accessAbstract
We report the first robust measurement of the Milky Way star formation history using the imprint left on chemical abundances of long-lived stars. The formation of the Galactic thick disk occurs during an intense star formation phase between 9.0 ( z ∼ 1.5) and 12.5 Gyr ( z ∼ 4.5) ago and is followed by a dip (at z ∼ 1.1) lasting about 1 Gyr. Our results imply that the thick disk is as massive as the Milky Way's thin disk, suggesting a fundamental role of this component in the genesis of our Galaxy, something that had been largely unrecognized. This new picture implies that huge quantities of gas necessary to feed the building of the thick disk must have been present at these epochs, in contradiction with the long-term infall assumed by chemical evolution models in the last two decades. These results allow us to fit the Milky Way within the emerging features of the evolution of disk galaxies in the early universe.
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“Accordingly, the Milky Way never experienced a major merger since reaching a mass of M ? 10 9 M , which it had already attained at z = 4 (Snaith et al. 2014; Kruijssen et al. 2019b).”
From Kraken reveals itself – the merger history of the Milky Way reconstructed with the E-MOSAICS simulations (2020) · cites this paper as Snaith et al. 2014
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Metadata
- Authors
- Snaith, O. N., Haywood, M., Di Matteo, P., Lehnert, M. D., Combes, F., Katz, D., & Gómez, A.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Snaith, Owain N.
- Venue
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Publisher
- American Astronomical Society
- Published
- 2014-01-10
- Volume
- 781
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- L31
- ISSN
- 2041-8205 (ISSN-L)
- 2041-8213
- OpenAlex
- W2079368516
- Cited by
- 153
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 12
- FWCI
- 11.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- The Astrophysical Journal Letters (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-10-BLAN-0508, ANR-10)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies
- Keywords
- Milky Way thick disk, star formation history, chemical abundances, disk galaxy evolution, gas infall, disk mass, chemical evolution models
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