eprintid: 29328 rev_number: 17 eprint_status: archive userid: 5683 dir: disk0/00/02/93/28 datestamp: 2021-03-16 11:32:05 lastmod: 2021-03-31 13:22:37 status_changed: 2021-03-16 11:32:05 type: doctoralThesis metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Frankel, Neige title: Forward Modelling the Secular Evolution of the Milky Way Disk subjects: ddc-500 subjects: ddc-520 divisions: i-130001 adv_faculty: af-13 abstract: We know precisely the position of the Sun in our Galaxy. Yet, like for most stars, we cannot tell where it was born. Stars undergo dynamical memory loss: their orbits evolve, because the Milky Way, like many galaxies, has non-axisymmetric structures (e.g. bar, spirals) that shuffle stellar orbits. My thesis quantifies the strength of that process to answer: How (much) do stars change orbit? Can we still infer their birth places, to constrain the formation of the Milky Way disk? I have combined data from the large stellar surveys APOGEE and Gaia, and developed a method to extract the information they contain on the Galactic disk evolution. I forward-modelled the formation of the stellar disk, the stars’ elemental abundances and their subsquent orbital diffusion, which then informs us about their birth radii through ’weak chemical tagging’. I have found that stars can change orbits by large amounts, and most of this evolution is cold (the orbits stay near- circular). Secular evolution determines how the Milky Way disk is structued. If the Milky Way is typical this explain what drives disk galaxies in general to their typical exponential disk density profiles. date: 2021 id_scheme: DOI id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00029328 ppn_swb: 1752981154 own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-293288 date_accepted: 2020-10-14 advisor: HASH(0x55fc36c905a8) language: eng bibsort: FRANKELNEIFORWARDMOD2021 full_text_status: public place_of_pub: Heidelberg citation: Frankel, Neige (2021) Forward Modelling the Secular Evolution of the Milky Way Disk. [Dissertation] document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/29328/1/thesis.pdf