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arxiv 1805.09198 v1 pith:ZUYWZ2WH submitted 2018-05-23 astro-ph.GA

Measuring Radial Orbit Migration in the Milky Way Disk

classification astro-ph.GA
keywords migrationradialmodelorbitdiskmathrmmilkyradius
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We develop and apply a model to quantify the global efficiency of radial orbit migration among stars in the Milky Way disk. This model parameterizes the possible star formation and enrichment histories, radial birth profiles, and combines them with a migration model that relates present-day orbital radii to birth radii through a Gaussian probability, broadening with age $\tau$ as $\sigma_\mathrm{RM8}~\sqrt{\tau/8{~\mathrm{Gyr}}}$. Guided by observations, we assume that stars are born with an initially tight age--metallicity relation at given radius, which becomes subsequently scrambled by radial orbit migration, thereby providing a direct observational constraint on radial orbit migration strength $\sigma_\mathrm{RM8}$. We fit this model with MCMC to the observed age--metallicity distribution of low-$\alpha$ red clump stars with Galactocentric radii between 5 and 14 kpc from APOGEE DR12, sidestepping the complex spatial selection function and accounting for the considerable age uncertainties. This simple model reproduces well the observed data, and we find a global (in radius and time) radial orbit migration efficiency in the Milky Way of $\sigma_\mathrm{RM8}=3.6\pm 0.1$ kpc when marginalizing over all other model aspects. This shows that radial orbit migration in the Milky Way's main disk is indeed rather strong, in line with theoretical expectations: stars migrate by about a half-mass radius over the age of the disk. The model finds the Sun's birth radius at $\sim 5.2$ kpc. If such strong radial orbit migration is typical, this mechanism plays indeed an important role in setting the structural regularity of disk galaxies.

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Cited by 2 Pith papers

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  1. Milky Way Mapper decoded abundances -- II: From patterns to paths

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    Reprojects abundances of 199k stars into 4 patterns, identifying enrichment pathways with strong chemo-spatial, age, and vertical correlations plus a transition at ~6 Gyr.

  2. In Pursuit of Galactic Archaeology: Astro2020 Science White Paper

    astro-ph.GA 2019-07 unverdicted novelty 2.0

    The paper proposes a comprehensive phase-space map of the Milky Way disk from existing and planned surveys plus a consortium to turn those data into a reconstruction of the galaxy's evolutionary history.