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The Unmixed Debris of Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus in the Form of a Pair of Halo Stellar Overdensities

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Author(s):
Perottoni, Helio D. ; Limberg, Guilherme ; Amarante, Joao A. S. ; Rossi, Silvia ; Queiroz, Anna B. A. ; Santucci, Rafael M. ; Perez-Villegas, Angeles ; Chiappini, Cristina
Total Authors: 8
Document type: Journal article
Source: Astrophysical Journal Letters; v. 936, n. 1, p. 7-pg., 2022-09-01.
Abstract

In the first billion years after its formation, the Galaxy underwent several mergers with dwarf satellites of various masses. The debris of Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus (GSE), the galaxy responsible for the last significant merger of the Milky Way, dominates the inner halo and has been suggested to be the progenitor of both the Hercules-Aquila Cloud (HAC) and Virgo Overdensity (VOD). We combine SEGUE, APOGEE, Gaia, and StarHorse distances to characterize the chemodynamical properties and verify the link between HAC, VOD, and GSE. We find that the orbital eccentricity distributions of the stellar overdensities and GSE are comparable. We also find that they have similar, strongly peaked, metallicity distribution functions, reinforcing the hypothesis of common origin. Furthermore, we show that HAC and VOD are indistinguishable from the prototypical GSE population within all chemical-abundance spaces analyzed. All these evidences combined provide a clear demonstration that the GSE merger is the main progenitor of the stellar populations found within these halo overdensities. (AU)

FAPESP's process: 21/10429-0 - The chemodynamical structure of the ancient galactic halo
Grantee:Guilherme Limberg
Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)
FAPESP's process: 14/18100-4 - Stellar populations in the Milky Way: bulge, halo, disk and star forming regions; instrumentation for high resolution spectroscopy
Grantee:Beatriz Leonor Silveira Barbuy
Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
FAPESP's process: 15/50374-0 - Mosaic: the multi-object spectrograph for the ESO Extremely Large Telescope
Grantee:Silvia Cristina Fernandes Rossi
Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
FAPESP's process: 18/21250-9 - Identification of bright ultra-metal-poor stars from Multi-Band photometry and spectroscopic follow-up
Grantee:Hélio Dotto Perottoni
Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral