Reconstructing the star formation history of the Milky Way disc(s) from chemical abundances

Abstract

We develop a chemical evolution model in order to study the star formation history of the Milky Way. Our model assumes that the Milky Way is formed from a closed box-like system in the inner regions, while the outer parts of the disc experience some accretion. Unlike the usual procedure, we do not fix the star formation prescription (e.g. Kennicutt law) in order to reproduce the chemical abundance trends. Instead, we fit the abundance trends with age in order to recover the star formation history of the Galaxy. Our method enables one to recover with unprecedented accuracy the star formation history of the Milky Way in the first Gyrs, in both the inner (R<7-8kpc) and outer (R>9-10kpc) discs as sampled in the solar vicinity. We show that, in the inner disc, half of the stellar mass formed during the thick disc phase, in the first 4-5 Gyr. This phase was followed by a significant dip in the star formation activity (at 8-9 Gyr) and a period of roughly constant lower level star formation for the remaining 8 Gyr. The thick disc phase has produced as many metals in 4 Gyr as the thin disc in the remaining 8 Gyr. Our results suggest that a closed box model is able to fit all the available constraints in the inner disc. A closed box system is qualitatively equivalent to a regime where the accretion rate, at high redshift, maintains a high gas fraction in the inner disc. In such conditions, the SFR is mainly governed by the high turbulence of the ISM. By z~1 it is possible that most of the accretion takes place in the outer disc, while the star formation activity in the inner disc is mostly sustained by the gas not consumed during the thick disc phase, and the continuous ejecta from earlier generations of stars. The outer disc follows a star formation history very similar to that of the inner disc, although initiated at z~2, about 2 Gyr before the onset of the thin disc formation in the inner disc.

30 pages, 18 figures, 3 tables, accepted by A&A - minor stylistic changes

References in corpus (10)

• Cosmic Star Formation History
• The present-day star formation rate of the Milky-Way determined from Spitzer detected young stellar objects
• Radial mixing and the transition between the thick and thin Galactic discs
• A First Constraint on the Thick Disk Scale Length: Differential Radial Abundances in K Giants at Galactocentric Radii 4, 8, and 12 kpc
• Tracing chemical evolution over the extent of the Milky Way's Disk with APOGEE Red Clump Stars
• Where are the ``Missing'' Galactic Baryons?
• Revisiting two local constraints of the Galactic chemical evolution
• Mapping a stellar disk into a boxy bulge: The outside-in part of the Milky Way bulge formation
• The chemical evolution of a Milky Way-like galaxy: the importance of a cosmologically motivated infall law
• The galactic habitable zone of the Milky Way and M31 from chemical evolution models with gas radial flows

Cited by in corpus (48)

• The E-MOSAICS project: tracing galaxy formation and assembly with the age-metallicity distribution of globular clusters
• Abundance to age ratios in the HARPS-GTO sample with Gaia DR2: Chemical clocks for a range of [Fe/H]
• Origin of chemically distinct discs in the Auriga cosmological simulations
• High-precision abundances of elements in solar-type stars. Evidence of two distinct sequences in abundance-age relations
• The GALAH survey: tracing the Galactic disk with Open Clusters
• Gaia DR2 reveals a star formation burst in the disc 2-3 Gyr ago
• Bar quenching in gas-rich galaxies
• PLATO as it is: a legacy mission for Galactic archaeology
• APOGEE DR16: a multi-zone chemical evolution model for the Galactic disc based on MCMC methods
• Constraining planet structure and composition from stellar chemistry: trends in different stellar populations
• Quantifying stellar radial migration in an N-body simulation: blurring, churning, and the outer regions of galaxy discs
• The Accreted Nuclear Clusters of the Milky Way
• Formation histories of stars, clusters and globular clusters in the E-MOSAICS simulations
• The Canada-France Imaging Survey: Reconstructing the Milky Way Star Formation History from its White Dwarf Population
• HAT-P-65b and HAT-P-66b: Two Transiting Inflated Hot Jupiters and Observational Evidence for the Re-Inflation of Close-In Giant Planets
• The spatially-resolved star formation histories of CALIFA galaxies: Implications for galaxy formation
• Chemical evolution of the Milky Way: constraints on the formation of the thick and thin discs
• Modelling Neutron Star-Black Hole Binaries: Future Pulsar Surveys and Gravitational Wave Detectors
• Metallicity Structure in the Milky Way Disk Revealed by Galactic HII Regions
• A Milky Way with a massive, centrally concentrated thick disc: new Galactic mass models for orbit computations
• Revisiting long-standing puzzles of the Milky Way: the Sun and its vicinity as typical outer disk chemical evolution
• The age-chemical abundance structure of the Galactic disc II: $\alpha$-dichotomy and thick disc formation
• The low-mass content of the massive young star cluster RCW 38
• Characterizing epochs of star formation across the Milky Way disc using age-metallicity distributions of GALAH stars
• BAFFLES: Bayesian Ages for Field Lower-Mass Stars
• Core-Collapse Supernovae in Binaries as the Origin of Galactic Hyper-Runaway Stars
• Heavy double neutron stars: birth, mid-life and death
• 3D hydrodynamic simulations for the formation of the Local Group satellite planes
• A unified model for age-velocity dispersion relations in Local Group galaxies: Disentangling ISM turbulence and latent dynamical heating
• The Milky Way's bulge star formation history as constrained from its bimodal chemical abundance distribution
• Star formation history of the solar neighbourhood as told by Gaia
• What the Milky Way bulge reveals about the initial metallicity gradients in the disc
• Bars & boxy/peanut bulges in thin & thick discs: I. Morphology and line-of-sight velocities of a fiducial model
• A Statistical Estimation of the Occurrence of Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the Milky Way Galaxy
• Effects of the selection function on metallicity trends in spectroscopic surveys of the Milky Way
• The structure of the Milky Way based on unWISE 3.4$\mu$m integrated photometry
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: Oxygen abundance in the Galactic thin and thick disks
• Testing Earth-like atmospheric evolution on exo-Earths through oxygen absorption: required sample sizes and the advantage of age-based target selection
• Modification of the radioactive heat budget of Earth-like exoplanets by the loss of primordial atmospheres
• Towards a fully consistent Milky Way disk model -- IV. The impact of Gaia DR2 and APOGEE
• The Effect of Atmospheric Cooling on the Vertical Velocity Dispersion and Density Distribution of Brown Dwarfs
• Connecting the local stellar halo and its dark matter density to dwarf galaxies via blue stragglers
• On the recurrence times of neutron star X-ray binary transients and the nature of the Galactic Centre quiescent X-ray binaries
• The Radial Distribution of Mono-Metallicity Populations in the Galactic Disk as Evidence for Two-Phase Disk Formation
• No Evolution in the Half-mass Radius of Milky Way-type Galaxies over the Last 10 Gyr
• SDSS-IV/MaNGA: Can impulsive gaseous inflows explain steep oxygen abundance profiles \& anomalously-low-metallicity regions?
• Clues to the formation of the Milky Way's thick disk
• Star Cluster Ecology: Revisiting the Origin of Iron and Age Complex Clusters