Unveiling the time evolution of chemical abundances across the Milky Way disk with APOGEE

Understand

Chemical abundances are an essential tool in untangling the Milky Way's enrichment history.

• However, the evolution of the interstellar medium abundance gradient with cosmic time is lost as a result of radial mixing processes.
• For the first time, we quantify the evolution of many observational abundances across the Galactic disk as a function of lookback time and birth radius, $R_\text{birth}$.
• Using an empirical approach, we derive $R_\text{birth}$ estimates for 145,447 APOGEE DR17 red giant disk stars, based solely on their ages and [Fe/H].