Modeling the Galactic disk in the age of Gaia (Ivan Minchev, AIP)
Channel: Academy of Athens
Date: 13/01/2022

Tuesday 7 December 2021

Ivan Minchev
Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP)

Abstract:

With the second Gaia data release it has become clear that the Milky Way disc is not in a stationary state, as often assumed in the past. An out-of-equilibrium disc makes it particularly difficult to interpret observations, as it implies strong time-dependent phenomena. The new data has opened up a number of questions: Is the disc ringing from a single (e.g., the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy) or multiple recent mergers? Is it wobbling due to internal or external perturbations? Is the central bar long and slow or short and fast? Is the geometric thick disc flaring? In this talk I will review our best understanding of the rich Galactic disc phase-space structure and will discuss how it can be linked to the disc’s present state and past evolution with the help of state-of-the-art simulations. 

Talk presented at the Research Center for Astronomy and Applied Mathematics of the Academy of Athens