Metallicity distribution of halo stars and minor merger processes of the Galaxy

2001/05/30 by Y. Lu, Yu Lu, Lu, Y. +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #History and Developments in Astronomy #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0105516

13 pages, Latex

arxiv created 2001/05/30 · openalex publication_date 2001/05/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

A possible relation between the high dispersion in metallicity of metal-poor halo stars and the minor merger processes in the history of the Galaxy is presented. The foreign populations of stars in the satellites through minor merger processes, make considerable contributions to the Galactic halo, therefore alter the intrinsic distribution of metallicities of the halo stars. Our model reproduces the observed trends in the metallicity distribution of the extremely metal-poor halo field stars in the Galaxy. Taken all the parameters for our model, a density of 1.9× 10^-3kpc^-3 of extremely metal-poor halo stars in -5

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