The role of radial migration in open cluster and field star populations with Gaia dr3

Abstract

The survival time of a star cluster depends on its total mass, density, and thus size, as well as on the environment in which it was born and in which lies. Its dynamical evolution is influenced by various factors such as gravitational effects of the Galactic bar, spiral structures, and molecular clouds. Overall, the factors that determine the longevity of a cluster are complex and not fully understood. This study aims to investigate if open clusters and field stars respond differently to the perturbations that cause radial migration. In particular, we aim at understanding the nature of the oldest surviving clusters. We compared the time evolution of the kinematic properties of two Gaia DR3 samples: the first sample is composed of $\sim$40 open clusters and the second one of $\sim$66,000 MSTO field stars. Both selected samples are composed of stars selected with the same quality criterion, belonging to the thin disc, in a similar metallicity range, located in the same Galactocentric region [7.5-9 kpc] and with ages >1 Gyr. We performed a statistical analysis comparing the properties of the samples of field stars and of open clusters. A qualitative comparison of kinematic and orbital properties reveals that clusters younger than 2-3 Gyr are more resistant to perturbations than field stars and they move along quasi-circular orbits. Conversely, clusters older than approximately 3 Gyr have more eccentric and inclined orbits than isolated stars in the same age range. Such orbits lead them to reach higher elevations on the Galactic plane, maximising their probability to survive several Gyr longer. A formal statistical analysis reveals that there are differences among the time evolution of most of the kinematic and orbital properties of field stars and open clusters. Our results suggest that oldest survived clusters are usually more massive and move on orbits with higher eccentricity.

arXiv comment13 pages, 20 figures, 2 tables. Article accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (56)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• Binary companions of evolved stars in APOGEE DR14: Search method and catalog of ~5,000 companions
• Estimating distances from parallaxes. V: Geometric and photogeometric distances to 1.47 billion stars in Gaia Early Data Release 3
• galpy: A Python Library for Galactic Dynamics
• The mass distribution and gravitational potential of the Milky Way
• Radial Mixing in Galactic Discs
• The Tenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-III Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment
• The GALAH Survey: Scientific Motivation
• Dynamical evolution of star clusters in tidal fields
• The GALAH+ Survey: Third Data Release
• Painting a portrait of the Galactic disc with its stellar clusters
• Detection of the Schwarzschild precession in the orbit of the star S2 near the Galactic centre massive black hole
• APOGEE Data and Spectral Analysis from SDSS Data Release 16: Seven Years of Observations Including First Results from APOGEE-South
• Gaia Data Release 2: first stellar parameters from Apsis
• On the fraction of star formation occurring in bound stellar clusters
• Star cluster disruption by giant molecular clouds
• Gaia Data Release 3: Analysis of RVS spectra using the General Stellar Parametriser from spectroscopy
• The Time Scale of Escape from Star Clusters
• Chemical abundances of 1111 FGK stars from the HARPS GTO planet search program II: Cu, Zn, Sr, Y, Zr, Ba, Ce, Nd and Eu
• Disruption time scales of star clusters in different galaxies
• The early dynamical evolution of cool, clumpy star clusters
• Star cluster formation in cosmological simulations. I. Properties of young clusters
• The lives and deaths of star clusters near the Galactic center
• Stellar Radial Velocities in the Old Open Cluster M67 (NGC 2682) I. Memberships, Binaries, and Kinematics
• The Galactic Disc in Action Space as seen by Gaia DR2
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: radial distribution of abundances in the Galactic disc from open clusters and young field stars
• The GALAH survey: tracing the Galactic disk with Open Clusters
• The chemical abundance of the very metal rich old Open Clusters NGC 6253 and NGC 6791
• The effect of spiral arm passages on the evolution of stellar clusters
• Stellar parametrization from Gaia RVS spectra
• Imprints of radial migration on the Milky Way's metallicity distribution functions
• The Gaia-ESO survey: mapping the shape and evolution of the radial abundance gradients with open clusters
• The extended halo of NGC 2682 (M 67) from Gaia DR2
• Searching for Chemical Signatures of Multiple Stellar Populations in the Old, Massive Open Cluster NGC 6791
• If it does not kill them, it makes them stronger: collisional evolution of star clusters with tidal shocks
• Star Clusters in Evolving Galaxies
• Properties of Star Clusters - II: Scale Height Evolution of Clusters
• Stellar ages, masses, extinctions and orbital parameters based on spectroscopic parameters of Gaia DR3
• The origin and orbit of the old, metal-rich, open cluster NGC 6791: Insights from kinematics
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: Age-chemical-clock relations spatially resolved in the Galactic disc
• Gravitational scattering of stars and clusters and the heating of the Galactic disk
• Radial Migration from Metallicity Gradient of Open Clusters and Outliers
• Chemical abundances of 1111 FGK stars from the HARPS-GTO planet search sample. III. Sulfur
• Death of a cluster: the destruction of M67 as seen by the SDSS
• Estimating stellar ages and metallicities from parallaxes and broadband photometry - successes and shortcomings
• Mergers, tidal interactions, and mass exchange in a population of disc globular clusters
• The Old, Super-Metal-Rich Open Cluster, NGC 6791 - Elemental Abundances in Turn-off Stars from Keck/HIRES Spectra
• Open Clusters as Tracers on Radial Migration of the Galactic Disk
• Evolution of star clusters on eccentric orbits
• Observational evidence for bar formation in disk galaxies via cluster-cluster interaction
• Stars on the run: escaping from stellar clusters
• Enlightening the dynamical evolution of Galactic open clusters: an approach using Gaia DR3 and analytical descriptions
• Destruction of star clusters due to the radial migration in spiral galaxies
• On the efficiency of field star capture by star clusters
• Tidal disruption of star clusters in galaxy formation simulations
• Gravitational interactions between globular and open clusters: an introduction

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Mapping radial abundance gradients with Gaia-ESO open clusters: Evidence of recent gas accretion in the Milky Way disk
• The completeness of the open cluster census towards the Galactic anticentre
• Probing the strength of radial migration via churning by using metal-rich red giant stars from APOGEE
• Chemodynamic evolution of Sun-like stars in nearby moving groups
• Advanced Classification of Hot Subdwarf Binaries Using Artificial Intelligence Techniques and Gaia DR3 data
• The Gaia-ESO Survey DR5.1 and Gaia DR3 GSP-Spec: a comparative analysis
• Modelling the evolution of the Galactic disc scale height traced by open clusters
• Probing the origins. I. Generalised Additive Model inference of birth radii for Milky Way stars in the solar vicinity
• Stellar Population Astrophysics (SPA) with the TNG: NLTE atmospheric parameters and abundances of giant stars in 33 Open Clusters
• The Galactic inner spiral arms revealed by the Gaia ESO Survey chemical abundances. Metallicity and [Mg/Fe] ratios
• Comparing radial migration in dark matter and MOND regimes