FASHIONABLY LATE? BUILDING UP THE MILKY WAY'S INNER HALO

Using a sample of 246 metal-poor stars (RR Lyraes, red giants, and red horizontal branch stars) which is remarkable for the accuracy of its six-dimensional kinematical data, we find, by examining the distribution of stellar orbital angular momenta, a new component for the local halo which has an axial ratio c/a similar to 0.2, a similar flattening to the thick disk. It has a small prograde rotation but is supported by velocity anisotropy, and contains more intermediate-metallicity stars (with - 1.5 < [Fe/H] < - 1.0) than the rest of our sample. We suggest that this component was formed quite late, during or after the formation of the disk. It formed either from the gas that was accreted by the last major mergers experienced by the Galaxy, or by dynamical friction of massive infalling satellite(s) with the halo and possibly the stellar disk or thick disk. The remainder of the halo stars in our sample, which are less closely confined to the disk plane, exhibit a clumpy distribution in energy and angular momentum, suggesting that the early, chaotic conditions under which the inner halo formed were not violent enough to erase the record of their origins. The clumpy structure suggests that a relatively small number of progenitors were responsible for building up the inner halo, in line with theoretical expectations. We find a difference in mean binding energy between the RR Lyrae variables and the red giants in our sample, suggesting that more of the RR Lyraes in the sample belong to the outer halo, and that the outer halo may be somewhat younger, as first suggested by Searle & Zinn. We also find that the RR Lyrae mean rotation is more negative than the red giants, which is consistent with the recent result of Carollo et al. that the outer halo has a retrograde rotation and with the difference in kinematics seen between RR Lyraes and blue horizontal branch stars by Kinman et al. (2007).