Formation of the Galactic bulge from a two-component stellar disk: Explaining cylindrical rotation and vertical metallicity gradient

TL;DR

This study investigates two models of Galactic bulge formation, demonstrating that a two-component disk model better explains observed cylindrical rotation and metallicity gradients than a pure thin disk model.

Contribution

The paper introduces and compares two bulge formation scenarios, showing the two-component disk model aligns with observations while the pure disk model does not.

Findings

Two-component disk model explains both rotation and metallicity gradient.

Pure thin disk model results in a flatter metallicity gradient.

Thick disk stars preserve lower metallicity at higher |z|.

Abstract

Recent observational studies have revealed that the Galactic bulge has cylindrical rotation and a steeper vertical metallicity gradient. We adopt two representative models for the bulge formation and thereby investigate whether the two models can explain both the observed cylindrical rotation and vertical metallicity gradient in a self-consistent manner. One is the "pure disk scenario" (PDS) in which the bulge is formed from a pure thin stellar disk through spontaneous bar instability. The other is the "two-component disk scenario" (TCDS) in which the bulge is formed from a disk composed of thin and thick disks through bar instability. Our numerical simulations show that although PDS can reproduce the cylindrical rotation, it shows a rather flatter vertical metallicity gradient that is inconsistent with observations. The derived flatter metallicity gradient is due to the vertical mixing of stars with different initial metallicities by the stellar bar. This result implies that the bulge can not be simply formed from a pure thin stellar disk. On the other hand, the bulge formed from the two-component disk in TCDS can explain both the observed cylindrical rotation and vertical metallicity gradient of the Galactic bulge reasonably well. In TCDS, more metal-poor stars at higher |z| (vertical distance) which originate from the already dynamically hotter thick disk can not be strongly influenced by vertical mixing of the bar so that they can stay in situ for longer timescales and thus keep the lower metallicity at higher |z|. Consequently, the vertical metallicity gradient of the bulge composed of initially thin and thick disk stars can not be so flattened, even if the gradient of the thin disk can be flattened significantly by the bar in TCDS.