The [α/Fe]-[Fe/H] relation in the E-MOSAICS simulations: its connection to the birth place of globular clusters and the fraction of globular cluster field stars in the bulge

Abstract

The α-element abundances of the globular cluster (GC) and field star populations of galaxies encode information about the formation of each of these components. We use the E-MOSAICS cosmological simulations of ~L* galaxies and their GCs to investigate the [α/Fe]-[Fe/H] distribution of field stars and GCs in 25 Milky Way-mass galaxies. The [α/Fe]-[Fe/H] distribution go GCs largely follows that of the field stars and can also therefore be used as tracers of the [α/Fe]-[Fe/H] evolution of the galaxy. Due to the difference in their star formation histories, GCs associated with stellar streams (i.e. which have recently been accreted) have systematically lower [α/Fe] at fixed [Fe/H]. Therefore, if a GC is observed to have low [α/Fe] for its [Fe/H] there is an increased probability that this GC was accreted recently alongside a dwarf galaxy. There is a wide range of shapes for the field star [α/Fe]-[Fe/H] distribution, with a notable subset of galaxies exhibiting bimodal distributions, in which the high [α/Fe] sequence is mostly comprised of stars in the bulge, a high fraction of which are from disrupted GCs. We calculate the contribution of disrupted GCs to the bulge component of the 25 simulated galaxies and find values between 0.3-14 per cent, where this fraction correlates with the galaxy's formation time. The upper range of these fractions is compatible with observationally-inferred measurements for the Milky Way, suggesting that in this respect the Milky Way is not typical of L* galaxies, having experienced a phase of unusually rapid growth at early times.

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