The nuclear star cluster and nuclear stellar disc of the Milky Way: Different stellar population and star formation history

TL;DR

This study investigates the stellar populations and star formation histories of the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster and nuclear stellar disc, revealing distinct populations and complex structures through detailed photometric analysis.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed comparison of stellar populations and extinction features of the NSC and NSD, demonstrating their different star formation histories and structural complexities.

Findings

NSD shows a double red clump, indicating a specific stellar population.

NSC exhibits a complex structure with three Gaussian features.

Distance estimates suggest both populations are near the Galactic centre.

Abstract

The Milky Way's nuclear stellar disc (NSD) and nuclear star cluster (NSC) are the main features of the Galactic centre. Nevertheless, their observation is hampered by the extreme source crowding and high extinction. Hence, their relation and formation scenario are not fully clear yet. We aim at detecting the stellar populations from the NSC and the NSD along the line-of-sight towards the NSC, and assess whether they have different stellar populations and star formation histories. We analysed the colour-magnitude diagram, $K_s$ vs. $H-K_s$, of a region of $8.2'\times2.8'$ centred on the NSC, and detected two different stellar groups with different extinctions. We studied their red clumps to find the features associated to each of the stellar populations. We obtained that the two groups of stars correspond to the NSD and the NSC, and found that they have significantly different stellar populations and star formation histories. We detected a double red clump for the NSD population, in agreement with previous work, whereas the NSC presents a more complex structure well fitted by three Gaussian features. We created extinction maps to analyse the extinction variation between the detected stellar groups. We found that the high-extinction layer varies on smaller scales (arc-seconds), and that there is a difference of $A_{K_s}\sim0.6$\,mag between both extinction layers. Finally, we obtained that the distance towards each of the stellar populations is compatible with the Galactic centre distance, and found some evidence of a slightly closer distance for the NSD stars ($\sim360\pm200$\,pc).