{"paper":{"title":"The Age-Thickness Relation as a Tracer of the Merger History of Disk Galaxies","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"astro-ph.GA","authors_text":"Elena D'Onghia, Eloisa Poggio, Lekshmi Thulasidharan, Robert Benjamin, Ronald Drimmel","submitted_at":"2026-07-21T19:38:14Z","abstract_excerpt":"In the hierarchical framework of galaxy formation, disk galaxies are shaped by a sequence of mergers and interactions, yet reconstructing this history from observations remains challenging. We show that the merger history of a galaxy leaves measurable imprints in the vertical structure of its stellar disk. Using Milky Way analogues from the TNG50 simulations, we demonstrate that the Age-thickness relation, quantified by the dispersion of vertical stellar positions ($\\Delta_z$), encodes both the dynamical heating of pre-existing stars and the birth conditions of stars formed during perturbed ph"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2607.19537","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2607.19537/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}