eprintid: 35716
rev_number: 15
eprint_status: archive
userid: 8608
dir: disk0/00/03/57/16
datestamp: 2024-12-02 09:05:48
lastmod: 2024-12-11 12:51:14
status_changed: 2024-12-02 09:05:48
type: doctoralThesis
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Fürnkranz, Verena
title: The Small-Scale Structure of the Milky Way’s Orbit Distribution
subjects: ddc-520
divisions: i-130001
adv_faculty: af-13
cterms_swd: Milchstraße
cterms_swd: Sternhaufen
cterms_swd: Orbits
abstract: The Milky Way offers a unique opportunity to study the ‘clumpy-to-smooth’ orbit transition of stars in the Galactic disk: newly born stars are clustered across a wide range of scales, from compact bound objects to ephemeral birth clusterings and loose associations. Subsequently, most groups of stars disperse over time, spreading out in orbit and orbital-phase space and building up the Galactic field population. The age and orbit distribution of such co-natal groups offers the possibility to study on which orbits stars are born, how rapidly these systems disperse, and to what extent the orbit distribution reflects a possible birth from extended molecular gas filaments. Specifically, this thesis shows that with the advent of the powerful Gaia dataset, we can identify stellar groups as small-scale overdensities in orbit and orbital phase space. We explore their distribution and discover that stellar groups are frequently located on similar orbits, aligned at distinct orbital phases. We then develop and apply an isochrone fitting method to derive age estimates of stellar populations, for which we only have a small set of stars initially. We find age-dating ambiguities that exist for groups where neither the lower main-sequence nor the main-sequence turn-off offer age information. Finally, we lay out avenues for exploring age and orbit correlations as a basis to map the dispersal of stellar ensembles in the Milky Way disk.
date: 2024
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00035716
ppn_swb: 1912042010
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-357169
date_accepted: 2024-10-21
advisor: HASH(0x55e83afc6598)
language: eng
bibsort: FURNKRANZVTHESMALLSC2024
full_text_status: public
place_of_pub: Heidelberg
citation:   Fürnkranz, Verena  (2024) The Small-Scale Structure of the Milky Way’s Orbit Distribution.  [Dissertation]     
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/35716/1/PhD_Thesis_Fuernkranz.pdf