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Paper: Galactic Archaeology and Minimum Spanning Trees
Volume: 507, Multi-Object Spectroscopy in the Next Decade: Big Questions, Large Surveys, and Wide Fields
Page: 79
Authors: MacFarlane, B. A.; Gibson, B. K.; Flynn, C. M. L.
Abstract: Chemical tagging of stellar debris from disrupted open clusters and associations underpins the science cases for next-generation multi-object spectroscopic surveys. As part of the Galactic Archaeology project TraCD (Tracking Cluster Debris), a preliminary attempt at reconstructing the birth clouds of now phase-mixed thin disk debris is undertaken using a parametric minimum spanning tree (MST) approach. Empirically-motivated chemical abundance pattern uncertainties (for a 10-dimensional chemistry-space) are applied to NBODY6-realized stellar associations dissolved into a background sea of field stars, all evolving in a Milky Way potential. We demonstrate that significant population reconstruction degeneracies appear when the abundance uncertainties approach ∼0.1 dex and the parameterized MST approach is employed; more sophisticated methodologies will be required to ameliorate these degeneracies.
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