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The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Article . 2025 . Peer-reviewed
License: CC BY
Data sources: Crossref
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The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Article . 2025
Data sources: DOAJ
https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/ar...
Article . 2025
License: CC BY NC SA
Data sources: Datacite
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Unveiling a Young Thick Disk in the Milky Way

Authors: Jianhui Lian; Min Du; Shuai Lu; Bingqiu Chen; Gail Zasowski; Zhaoyu Li; Xiaojie Liao; +1 Authors

Unveiling a Young Thick Disk in the Milky Way

Abstract

Abstract The thickness of a galaxy’s disk provides a valuable probe of its formation and evolution history. Observations of the Milky Way and local galaxies have revealed an ubiquitous disk structure with two distinctive components: an old thick disk and a relatively young thin disk. The formation of this dual-disk structure and the mechanisms that develop the thickness of the disk are still unclear. Whether the disk thickness is inherited from the birth environment or is established through secular dynamical heating after formation is under debate. In this work, we identify a relatively young (∼6.6 billion yr old), geometric thick disk in the Milky Way, with a scale height of 0.64 kpc at the solar circle. This young, thick component exhibits comparable thickness and flaring strength to the canonical old thick disk but is more radially extended and systematically younger. We also identify thin disk components that formed before and after this young thick disk. Detailed analysis of the solar vicinity structure suggests that the young thick disk marks the onset of a new phase of upside-down disk formation. These findings strongly discount the role of secular dynamical heating and support a turbulent, bursty birth environment as the primary mechanism behind thick disk formation. The existence of two thick disk components suggests that the Milky Way has undergone at least two episodes of turbulent and bursty star formation, likely triggered by galaxy mergers.

Related Organizations
Keywords

QB460-466, Galaxy structure, Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, Galaxy evolution, Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA), Chemical abundances, FOS: Physical sciences, Stellar populations, Astrophysics, Milky Way Galaxy, Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies, Galaxy stellar disks, Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)

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citations
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
2
Top 10%
Average
Average
Green
gold
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