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  • Bars and boxy/peanut bulges in thin and thick discs. II. Can bars form in hot thick discs?

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: The Milky Way as well as external galaxies possess a thick disc. However, the dynamical role of the (geometrically) thick disc on the bar formation and evolution is not fully understood. Here, we investigate the effect of thick discs in bar formation and evolution by means of a suite of $N$-body models of (kinematically cold) thin-(kinematically hot) thick discs. We systematically vary the mass fraction of the thick disc, the thin-to-thick disc scale length ratio as well as thick disc's scale height to examine the bar formation under diverse dynamical scenarios. Bars form almost always in our models, even in presence of a massive thick disc. The bar in the thick disc closely follow the overall growth and temporal evolution of the thin disc's bar, only the bar in the thick disc is weaker than the bar in the thin disc. The formation of stronger bars is associated with a simultaneous larger loss of angular momentum and a larger radial heating. In addition, we demonstrate a preferential loss of angular momentum and a preferential radial heating of disc stars, along the azimuthal direction within the extent of the bar, in both thin and thick disc stars. For purely thick disc models (without any thin disc), the bar formation critically depends on the disc scale length and scale height. A larger scale length and/or a larger vertical scale height delays the bar formation time and/or suppresses the bar formation almost completely in thick-disc-only models. We find that the Ostriker-Peeble criterion predicts the bar instability scenarios in our models better than the Efstathiou-Lake-Negroponte criterion.

  • The distribution of globular clusters in kinematic spaces does not trace the accretion history of the host galaxy

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: Reconstructing how all the stellar components of the Galaxy formed and assembled over time, by studying the properties of the stars which make it, is the aim of Galactic archeology. In these last years, thanks to the launch of the ESA Gaia astrometric mission, and the development of many spectroscopic surveys, we are for the first time in the position to delve into the layers of the past of our galaxy. Globular clusters (GCs) play a fundamental role in this research field since they are among the oldest stellar systems in the Milky Way (MW) and so bear witness of its entire past. In the recent years, there have been several attempts to constrain the nature of clusters (accreted or formed in the MW itself) through the analysis of kinematic spaces and to reconstruct from this the properties of the accretions events experienced by the MW through time. This work aims to test a widely-used assumption about the clustering of the accreted populations of GCs in the integrals of motions space. We analyze a set of dissipation-less N-body simulations that reproduce the accretion of one or two satellites with their GC population on a MW-type galaxy. Our results demonstrate that a significant overlap between accreted and "kinematically-heated" in-situ GCs is expected in kinematic spaces, for mergers with mass ratios of 1:10. In contrast with standard assumptions made in the literature so far, we find that accreted GCs do not show dynamical coherence, that is they do not cluster in kinematic spaces. In addition, GCs can also be found in regions dominated by stars which have a different origin (i.e. different progenitor). This casts doubt on the association between GCs and field stars that is generally made in the literature to assign them to a common origin. Our findings severely question the recovered accretion history of the MW based on the phase-space clustering of the GC population.

  • The e-TidalGCs Project: Modeling the extra-tidal features generated by Galactic globular clusters

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: We present the e-TidalGCs Project which aims at modeling and predicting the extra-tidal features surrounding all Galactic globular clusters for which 6D phase space information, masses and sizes are available (currently 159 globular clusters). We focus the analysis and presentation of the results on the distribution of extra-tidal material on the sky, and on the different structures found at different heliocentric distances. We emphasize the wide variety of morphologies found: beyond the canonical tidal tails, our models reveal that the extra-tidal features generated by globular clusters take a wide variety of shapes, from thin and elongated shapes, to thick, and complex halo-like structures. We also compare some of the most well studied stellar streams found around Galactic globular clusters to our model predictions, namely those associated to the clusters NGC 3201, NGC 4590, NGC 5466 and Pal 5. Additionally, we investigate how the distribution and extension in the sky of the simulated streams vary with the Galactic potential by making use of three different models, containing or not a central spheroid, or a stellar bar. Overall, our models predict that the mass lost by the current globular cluster population in the field from the last 5 Gyrs is between $0.3-2.1\times10^{7}M_{\odot}$, an amount comparable between 7-55 % of current mass. Most of this lost mass is found in the inner Galaxy, with the half-mass radius of this population being between 4-6 kpc. The outputs of the simulations will be publicly available, at a time when the ESA Gaia mission and complementary spectroscopic surveys are delivering exquisite data to which these models can be compared.

  • The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: WEAVE, the new wide-field, massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey facility for the William Herschel Telescope, will see first light in late 2022. WEAVE comprises a new 2-degree field-of-view prime-focus corrector system, a nearly 1000-multiplex fibre positioner, 20 individually deployable 'mini' integral field units (IFUs), and a single large IFU. These fibre systems feed a dual-beam spectrograph covering the wavelength range 366$-$959\,nm at $R\sim5000$, or two shorter ranges at $R\sim20\,000$. After summarising the design and implementation of WEAVE and its data systems, we present the organisation, science drivers and design of a five- to seven-year programme of eight individual surveys to: (i) study our Galaxy's origins by completing Gaia's phase-space information, providing metallicities to its limiting magnitude for $\sim$3 million stars and detailed abundances for $\sim1.5$ million brighter field and open-cluster stars; (ii) survey $\sim0.4$ million Galactic-plane OBA stars, young stellar objects and nearby gas to understand the evolution of young stars and their environments; (iii) perform an extensive spectral survey of white dwarfs; (iv) survey $\sim400$ neutral-hydrogen-selected galaxies with the IFUs; (v) study properties and kinematics of stellar populations and ionised gas in $z1$ million spectra of LOFAR-selected radio sources; (viii) trace structures using intergalactic/circumgalactic gas at $z>2$. Finally, we describe the WEAVE Operational Rehearsals using the WEAVE Simulator.