A time-resolved picture of our Milky Way’s early formation history

The formation of our Milky Way can be split up qualitatively into different phases that resulted in its structurally different stellar populations: the halo and the disk components 1 – 3 . Revealing a quantitative overall picture of our Galaxy’s assembly requires a large sample of stars with very pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2022-03, Vol.603 (7902), p.599-603
Main Authors: Xiang, Maosheng, Rix, Hans-Walter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/33/34/4120
639/33/34/863
639/33/34/867
Age
Age composition
Assembly
Chemical elements
Enceladus
Galactic disk
Galactic halos
Galaxies
Humanities and Social Sciences
Metallicity
Milky Way
Morphology
multidisciplinary
Orbits
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Star formation
Stars
Stars & galaxies
Stellar age
Stellar populations
Subgiant stars
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Summary:The formation of our Milky Way can be split up qualitatively into different phases that resulted in its structurally different stellar populations: the halo and the disk components 1 – 3 . Revealing a quantitative overall picture of our Galaxy’s assembly requires a large sample of stars with very precise ages. Here we report an analysis of such a sample using subgiant stars. We find that the stellar age–metallicity distribution p ( τ , [Fe/H]) splits into two almost disjoint parts, separated at age τ  ≃ 8 Gyr. The younger part reflects a late phase of dynamically quiescent Galactic disk formation with manifest evidence for stellar radial orbit migration 4 – 6 ; the other part reflects the earlier phase, when the stellar halo 7 and the old α -process-enhanced (thick) disk 8 , 9 formed. Our results indicate that the formation of the Galaxy’s old (thick) disk started approximately 13 Gyr ago, only 0.8 Gyr after the Big Bang, and 2 Gyr earlier than the final assembly of the inner Galactic halo. Most of these stars formed around 11 Gyr ago, when the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus satellite merged with our Galaxy 10 , 11 . Over the next 5–6 Gyr, the Galaxy experienced continuous chemical element enrichment, ultimately by a factor of 10, while the star-forming gas managed to stay well mixed. A sample of approximately 250,000 subgiant stars enables an alternative view of the Milky Way’s assembly history, especially the early formation history of the old disk and halo.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/s41586-022-04496-5