Popping star clusters as building blocks of the Milky Way Thick Disc

TL;DR

This paper uses numerical simulations to explore how star clusters that disperse after formation can contribute to the development of the Milky Way's thick disk by adding a kinematically hot stellar component.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical evidence supporting the hypothesis that dissolving massive star clusters can form the Milky Way's thick disk.

Findings

Massive star clusters (~10^6 Msol) can produce a kinematically hot stellar population.

Dispersed star clusters can significantly contribute to the thick disk formation.

Simulations show a plausible mechanism for thick disk emergence via cluster dissolution.

Abstract

It is widely believed that star clusters form with low star formation efficiencies. With the onset of stellar winds by massive stars or finally when the first super nova blows off, the residual gas is driven out of the embedded star cluster. Due to this fact a large amount, if not all, of the stars become unbound and disperse in the gravitational potential of the galaxy. In this context, Kroupa (2002) suggested a new mechanism for the emergence of thickened Galactic discs. Massive star clusters add kinematically hot components to the galactic field populations, building up in this way, the Galactic thick disc as well. In this work we perform, for the first time, numerical simulations to investigate this scenario for the formation of the galactic discs of the Milky Way. We find that a significant kinematically hot population of stars may be injected into the disk of a galaxy such that a thick disk emerges. For the MW the star clusters that formed the thick disk must have had masses of about 10^6 Msol.