The chemical evolution of a Milky Way-like galaxy: the importance of a cosmologically motivated infall law

TL;DR

This study investigates whether a cosmologically motivated gas infall law, derived from LambdaCDM simulations, can reproduce the chemical evolution characteristics of a Milky Way-like galaxy, aligning with observational data.

Contribution

It demonstrates that cosmologically derived infall laws can successfully replicate the chemical evolution of the Milky Way within a detailed chemical model.

Findings

Cosmological infall law predicts two main gas accretion episodes.

Results align with the classical two-infall model for the Milky Way.

Chemical properties match observational constraints.

Abstract

We aim at finding a cosmologically motivated infall law to understand if the LambdaCDM cosmology can reproduce the main chemical characteristics of a Milky Way-like spiral galaxy. In this work we test several different gas infall laws, starting from that suggested in the two-infall model for the chemical evolution of the Milky Way by Chiappini et al., but focusing on laws derived from cosmological simulations which follows a concordance LambdaCDM cosmology. By means of a detailed chemical evolution model for the solar vicinity, we study the effects of the different gas infall laws on the abundance patterns and the G-dwarf metallicity distribution. The cosmological gas infall law predicts two main gas accretion episodes. By means of this cosmologically motivated infall law, we study the star formation rate, the SNIa and SNII rate, the total amount of gas and stars in the solar neighbourhood and the behaviour of several chemical abundances. We find that the results of the two-infall model are fully compatible with the evolution of the Milky Way with cosmological accretion laws. A gas assembly history derived from a DM halo, compatible with the formation of a late-type galaxy from the morphological point of view, can produce chemical properties in agreement with the available observations.