Characterization of a simulated minor merger resembling Gaia-Enceladus

Bos, Roy (2019) Characterization of a simulated minor merger resembling Gaia-Enceladus. Bachelor's Thesis, Astronomy.

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Abstract

The second Gaia data release (Gaia Collaboration et al., 2018a) has provided evidence for a merger event roughly 10 Gyr ago with an object named Gaia-Enceladus (Helmi et al., 2018). A previous simulation by Villalobos and Helmi (2008, 2009) produced a similar velocity distribution of halo stars near the Sun as seen in the Gaia data. In this bachelor thesis I continue this simulation for 10 Gyr in an attempt to characterize stars of Gaia-Enceladus, which accounts for a large fraction of the galactic halo and possibly triggered the formation of the thick disk. The aim of the thesis is to help interpret the observations and to provide means to find likely members of Gaia-Enceladus in the Gaia data, especially at large distances from the Sun. I find that the characteristic kinematics of the accreted stars are maintained through the extension of the simulation and still show similarities to the various features seen in the Gaia data. These features can be understood well when analyzing the angular momentum and eccentricity as they are correlated to the initial position of the stars, and to the mass loss history.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Supervisor name:	Helmi, A.
Degree programme:	Astronomy
Thesis type:	Bachelor's Thesis
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	12 Jul 2019
Last Modified:	16 Jul 2019 09:26
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/20160

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