期刊
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
卷 495, 期 4, 页码 4098-4112出版社
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staa1358
关键词
stars: distances; stars: statistics; Galaxy: abundances; Galaxy: kinematics and dynamics
资金
- InternationalMax Planck Research School forAstronomy and Cosmic Physics at Heidelberg University (IMPRS-HD)
- European Research Council under the European Union [321035]
- DLR (German space agency) [50QG1403]
- [SFB 881]
- European Research Council (ERC) [321035] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
Stars born at the same time in the same place should have formed from gas of the same element composition. But most stars subsequently disperse from their birth siblings, in orbit and orbital phase, becoming 'field stars'. Here, we explore and provide direct observational evidence for this process in the Milky Way disc, by quantifying the probability that orbit-similarity among stars implies indistinguishable metallicity. We define the orbit similarity among stars through their distance in action-angle space, Delta(J, theta), and their abundance similarity simply by Delta[Fe/H]. Analysing a sample of main-sequence stars from Gala DR2 and LAMOST, we find an excess of pairs with the same metallicity (Delta[Fe/H] < 0.1) that extends to remarkably large separations in Delta(J, theta) that correspond to nearly 1 kpc distances. We assess the significance of this effect through a mock sample, drawn from a smooth and phase-mixed orbit distribution. Through grouping such star pairs into associations with a friend-of-friends algorithm linked by Delta(J,theta), we find 100s of mono-abundance groups with >= 3 (to greater than or similar to 20) members; these groups - some clusters, some spread across the sky - are over an order-of-magnitude more abundant than expected for a smooth phase-space distribution, suggesting that we are witnessing the `dissolution' of stellar birth associations into the field.
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