Timing the Early Assembly of the Milky Way with the H3 Survey

Understand

The archaeological record of stars in the Milky Way opens a uniquely detailed window into the early formation and assembly of galaxies.

• Here we use 11,000 main-sequence turn-off stars with well-measured ages, [Fe/H], [$\alpha$/Fe], and orbits from the H3 Survey and Gaia to time the major events in the early Galaxy.
• Located beyond the Galactic plane, $1\lesssim |Z|/\rm kpc \lesssim4$, this sample contains three chemically distinct groups: a low metallicity population, and low-$\alpha$ and high-$\alpha$ groups at higher metallicity.
• The age and orbit distributions of these populations show that: 1) the high-$\alpha$ group, which includes both disk stars and the in-situ halo, has a star-formation history independent of eccentricity that abruptly truncated $8.3\pm0.1$ Gyr ago ($z\simeq1$); 2) the low metallicity population, which we identify as the accreted stellar halo, is on eccentric orbits and its star formation truncated $10.2.^{+0.2}_{-0.1}$ Gyr ago ($z\simeq2$); 3) the low-$\alpha$ population is primarily on low eccentricity orbits and the bulk of its stars formed less than 8 Gyr ago.