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

Perottoni, Hélio D. and Limberg, Guilherme and Amarante, João A. S. and Rossi, Silvia and Queiroz, Anna B. A. and Santucci, Rafael M. and Pérez-Villegas, Angeles and Chiappini, Cristina (2022) The Unmixed Debris of Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus in the Form of a Pair of Halo Stellar Overdensities. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 936 (1). L2. ISSN 2041-8205

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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.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Apsci Archives > Physics and Astronomy
Depositing User: Unnamed user with email support@apsciarchives.com
Date Deposited: 26 Apr 2023 05:18
Last Modified: 03 Feb 2024 04:27
URI: http://eprints.go2submission.com/id/eprint/804

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