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 (95)

• Kraken reveals itself -- the merger history of the Milky Way reconstructed with the E-MOSAICS simulations
• 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
• Chemical Enrichment and Radial Migration in the Galactic Disk -- the origin of the [$\alpha /\mathrm{Fe}]$ Double Sequence
• 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
• Stellar clustering shapes the architectures of planetary systems
• The Accreted Nuclear Clusters of the Milky Way
• Quantifying stellar radial migration in an N-body simulation: blurring, churning, and the outer regions of galaxy discs
• Inside Out and Upside-Down: The Roles of Gas Cooling and Dynamical Heating in Shaping the Stellar Age-Velocity Relation
• 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
• The spatially-resolved star formation histories of CALIFA galaxies: Implications for galaxy formation
• HAT-P-65b and HAT-P-66b: Two Transiting Inflated Hot Jupiters and Observational Evidence for the Re-Inflation of Close-In Giant Planets
• 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
• Bimodality of [α/Fe]-[Fe/H] distributions is a natural outcome of dissipative collapse and disc growth in Milky Way-type galaxies
• Revisiting long-standing puzzles of the Milky Way: the Sun and its vicinity as typical outer disk chemical evolution
• Unveiling the Distinct Formation Pathways of the Inner and Outer Discs of the Milky Way with Bayesian Machine Learning
• 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
• Introducing EMP-Pathfinder: modelling the simultaneous formation and evolution of stellar clusters in their host galaxies
• BAFFLES: Bayesian Ages for Field Lower-Mass Stars
• Beyond the two-infall model I. Indications for a recent gas infall with Gaia DR3 chemical abundances
• Heavy double neutron stars: birth, mid-life and death
• Core-Collapse Supernovae in Binaries as the Origin of Galactic Hyper-Runaway Stars
• Radial structure and formation of the Milky Way disc
• 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
• Chemical Evolution with Radial Mixing Redux: Extending beyond the Solar Neighborhood
• Bars and boxy/peanut bulges in thin and thick discs. II. Can bars form in hot thick discs?
• Bars & boxy/peanut bulges in thin & thick discs: I. Morphology and line-of-sight velocities of a fiducial model
• Timing the Milky Way bar formation and the accompanying radial migration episode
• 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
• (Re)mind the gap: a hiatus in star formation history unveiled by APOGEE DR17
• Galactic chemical evolution of exoplanet host stars: Are high-mass planetary systems young?
• To Be or not to Be: the role of rotation in modeling Galactic Be X-ray Binaries
• Bioverse: a simulation framework to assess the statistical power of future biosignature surveys
• 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
• The QuaStar Survey: Detecting Hidden Low-Velocity Gas in the Milky Way's Circumgalactic Medium
• 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
• Eta-Earth Revisited II: Deriving a Maximum Number of Earth-like Habitats in the Galactic Disk
• The M dwarf problem: Fe and Ti abundances in a volume-limited sample of M dwarf stars
• The Photo-Astrometric Vertical Tracer Density of the Milky Way II: Results from Gaia
• The Effect of Atmospheric Cooling on the Vertical Velocity Dispersion and Density Distribution of Brown Dwarfs
• Towards a fully consistent Milky Way disk model -- IV. The impact of Gaia DR2 and APOGEE
• Evolution of the radial ISM metallicity gradient in the Milky Way disk since redshift $\approx 3$
• The impact of turbulent mixing on the galactic r-process enrichment by binary neutron star mergers
• The Mass and Age Distribution of Halo White Dwarfs in the Canada-France Imaging Survey
• 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
• Probing galaxy evolution from $z=0$ to $z\simeq 10$ through galaxy scaling relations in three L-Galaxies flavours
• Joint inference of the Milky Way star formation history and IMF from Gaia all-sky $G<13$ data
• The Photo-Astrometric Vertical Tracer Density of the Milky Way I: The Method
• Rediscovering the Milky Way with orbit superposition approach and APOGEE data II. Chrono-chemo-kinematics of the disc
• Rocks, Water and Noble Liquids: Unfolding the Flavor Contents of Supernova Neutrinos
• The Radial Distribution of Mono-Metallicity Populations in the Galactic Disk as Evidence for Two-Phase Disk Formation
• Are Milky-Way-like galaxies like the Milky Way? A view from SDSS-IV/MaNGA
• Modelling the evolution of the Galactic disc scale height traced by open clusters
• Open cluster dissolution rate and the initial cluster mass function in the solar neighbourhood. Modelling the age and mass distributions of clusters observed by Gaia
• On the manifest link between Terzan 5 and the Galactic bulge
• Using chemical evolution models of the Milky Way disk to constrain Type Ia supernova progenitors
• Turbulent gas-rich discs at high redshift: origin of thick stellar discs through 3D 'baryon sloshing'
• A Galactic Self-Portrait: Density Structure and Integrated Properties of the Milky Way Disk
• 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?
• Chemodynamical Ages of Small-Scale Kinematic Structures of the Galactic Disc in the Solar Neighborhood from ~250,000 K and M Dwarfs
• The Milky Way in context: The formation of galactic discs and chemical sequences from a cosmological perspective
• The first phase of mass transfer in low-mass binaries: neither stable nor a common envelope
• Galactic Traversability: A New Concept for Extragalactic SETI
• Build-up and survival of the disc: From numerical models of galaxy formation to the Milky Way
• Neutrinos from stars in the Milky Way
• Observing Double White Dwarfs with the Lunar GW Antenna
• On the contribution of cosmic-ray interactions in the circumgalactic gas to the observed high-energy neutrino flux
• Clues to the formation of the Milky Way's thick disk
• Rapid early gas accretion for the inner Galactic disc
• The chemodynamical memory of a major merger in a NIHAO-UHD Milky Way analogue -- I. A golden thread through time and space
• The impact of radial migration on disk galaxy star formation histories: II. Role of bar strength, disk thickness, and merger history
• Forming Double Neutron Stars using Detailed Binary Evolution Models with POSYDON: Comparison to the Galactic Systems
• Star Cluster Ecology: Revisiting the Origin of Iron and Age Complex Clusters