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  4. The Pristine Survey - VIII. The metallicity distribution function of the Milky Way halo down to the extremely metal-poor regime
 
research article

The Pristine Survey - VIII. The metallicity distribution function of the Milky Way halo down to the extremely metal-poor regime

Youakim, K.
•
Starkenburg, E.
•
Martin, N. F.
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March 1, 2020
Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society

The Pristine survey uses narrow-band photometry to derive precise metallicities down to the extremely metal-poor regime ([Fe/H] <-3), and currently consists Of over 4 million FGK-type stars over a sky area of similar to 2500 deg(2), We focus our analysis on a subsample of similar to 80 000 main-sequence turn-off stars with heliocentric distances between 6 and 20 kpc, which we take to be a representative sample of the inner halo, The resulting metallicity distribution function (MDF) has a peak at [Fe/H] = -1.6, and a slope of Delta(LogN)/Delta[Fe/H] = 1.0 +/- 0.1 in the metallicity range of -3,4 < [Fe/H] < -2.5. This agrees well with a simple closed-box chemical enrichment model in this range, hut is shallower than previous spectroscopic MDFs presented in the literature, suggesting that there may be a larger proportion of metal-poor stars in the inner halo than previously reported, We identify the Monoceros/TriAnd/ACS/EIRS/A13 structure in metallicity space in a low-latitude field in the anticentre direction, and also discuss the possibility that the inner halo is dominated by a single, large merger event, but cannot strongly support or refute this idea with the current data. Finally, based on the MDF of field stars, we estimate the number of expected metal-poor globular clusters in the Milky Way halo to he 5,4 for [Fe/II] <-2.5 and 1.5 for [Fe/II] <-3, suggesting that the lack of lowmetallicity globular clusters in the Milky Way is not due simply to statistical undersampling.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stz3619
Web of Science ID

WOS:000518148000029

Author(s)
Youakim, K.
Starkenburg, E.
Martin, N. F.
Matijevic, G.
Aguado, D. S.
Allende Prieto, C.
Arentsen, A.
Bonifacio, P.
Carlberg, R. G.
Gonzalez Hernandez, J. I
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Date Issued

2020-03-01

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS

Published in
Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society
Volume

492

Issue

4

Start page

4986

End page

5002

Subjects

Astronomy & Astrophysics

•

Astronomy & Astrophysics

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stars: abundances

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galaxy: abundances

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galaxy: evolution

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galaxy: formation

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galaxy: halo

•

galaxies: dwarf

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stellar halo

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dwarf galaxy

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sky survey

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evolution

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stars

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sagittarius

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abundance

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streams

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search

•

merger

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LASTRO  
Available on Infoscience
March 21, 2020
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/167504
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