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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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