Modelling our galaxy
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union Cambridge University Press (CUP) 14:S353 (2019) 101-108
The GALAH survey and Gaia DR2: dissecting the stellar disc's phase space by age, action, chemistry, and location
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 486:1 (2019) 1167-1191
Abstract:
We use the second data releases of the European Space AgencyGaia astrometric survey and the high-resolution Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) spectroscopic survey to analyse the structure of our Galaxy’s disc components. With GALAH, we separate the α-rich and α-poor discs (with respect to Fe), which are superposed in both position and velocity space, and examine their distributions in action space. We study the distribution of stars in the zVz phase plane, for both Vϕ and VR, and recover the remarkable ‘phase spiral’ discovered by Gaia. We identify the anticipated quadrupole signature in zVz of a tilted velocity ellipsoid for stars above and below the Galactic plane. By connecting our work with earlier studies, we show that the phase spiral is likely to extend well beyond the narrow solar neighbourhood cylinder in which it was found. The phase spiral is a signature of corrugated waves that propagate through the disc, and the associated non-equilibrium phase mixing. The radially asymmetric distribution of stars involved in the phase spiral reveals that the corrugation, which is mostly confined to the α-poor disc, grows in z-amplitude with increasing radius. We present new simulations of tidal disturbance of the Galactic disc by the Sagittarius (Sgr) dwarf. The effect on the zVz phase plane lasts ≳2Gyr, but a subsequent disc crossing wipes out the coherent structure. We find that the phase spiral was excited ≲0.5Gyr ago by an object like Sgr with total mass ∼3 × 1010 M⊙ (stripped down from ∼5 × 1010 M⊙ when it first entered the halo) passing through the plane.The origin of the Gaia phase-plane spiral
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 481:2 (2018) 1501-1506
Action-based dynamical models of dwarf spheroidal galaxies: application to Fornax
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 480:1 (2018) 927-946
Models of rotating coronae
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 481:3 (2018) 3370-3381