Building blocks of the Milky Way revealed from the chemodynamics of halo stars
speaker: Tadafumi Matsuno
Abstract:
Since galaxy merger and accretion are fundamental processes in galaxy evolution, reconstructing the accretion history is key to understanding the evolution of a galaxy. In the Milky Way, we can study ancient accretion events from kinematics and chemical abundances of halo stars. In this talk, I will first summarize the discovery of candidates for past galaxy accretions to the Milky Way, which are made from the analysis of stellar kinematics available thanks to the Gaia mission. I will then talk about our follow-up observation programs to chemically characterize their members, allowing us to confirm the accretion events and characterize the accreted galaxies’ properties. I will finally summarize the new opportunities that these found accreted galaxies bring to the study of nucleosynthesis processes.