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| Paper: |
Probing the Formation of the Milk Way |
| Volume: |
458, Galactic Archaeology: Near-Field Cosmology and the Formation of the Milky Way |
| Page: |
359 |
| Authors: |
O'Shea, B. W.; Gomez, F.; Coleman-Smith, C.; Minchev, I.; Tumlinson, J.; Lee, Y. S.; Beers, T.; An, D. |
| Abstract: |
We explore two consequences of hierarchical structure formation on
galaxy evolution: the effect that a particular Milky Way-sized
galaxy's merger history has on the properties of its stellar halo and
dwarf galaxy population, and the signatures of minor mergers in the
thick disk of the Milky Way. In the first case, we use
semi-analytical models (which include phenomenological descriptions of
the evolution of stellar populations coupled to N-body produced merger
trees) to demonstrate that the formation history of galaxies of
approximately equal mass can significantly affect bulk properties of
the dwarf galaxy population, but that the galaxy's stellar halo
metallicity is much more robust. In the second project, we show that a
carefully-chosen sample of Solar neighborhood thick disk stars exhibit
distributions of energies that are consistent with the predictions of
a minor-merger event that corresponds to recent models of Sagittarius'
interactions with the disk of the Milky Way. |
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