2004/05/17 by Chris B. Brook, Daisuke Kawata, B. K. Gibson +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/422709
published as Astrophys.J. 612 (2004) 894-899 · accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2004/05/17 · openalex publication_date 2004/09/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
The disk galaxy simulated using our chemodynamic galaxy formation code, GCD+, is shown to have a thick-disk component. This is evidenced by the velocity dispersion versus age relation for solar neighborhood stars, which clearly shows an abrupt increase in velocity dispersion at a look-back time of approximately 8 Gyr, and is in excellent agreement with observation. These thick-disk stars are formed from gas that is accreted to the galaxy during a chaotic period of hierarchical clustering at high redshift. This formation scenario is shown to be consistent with observations of both the Milky Way and extragalactic thick disks.