Seminar
Galactic archeology of thick discs: excavating ESO 533-4 with VIMOS and ESO 243-49 with MUSE

Abstract

The disc of galaxies is made of the superposition of a thin and a thick disc. Thick discs are seen in edge-on galaxies as excesses of light a few thin disc scale-heights above the mid-plane. Star formation occurs in the thin discs whereas thick discs are made of old stars. The formation mechanisms of thick discs are under debate. Thick discs might have formed either at high redshift on a short time-scale or might have been built slowly over the cosmic time. They may have an internal or an external origin. To solve the issue of the thick disc origin we studied the kinematics and the stellar populations of the nearby edge-on galaxies ESO 533-4 and ESO 243-49. We present the first Integral Field Unit (IFU) spectroscopy works with enough depth and quality to study the thick discs. This was done with VIMOS@VLT and MUSE@VLT.

Our results point that thick discs formed in a relatively short event at high redshift and that the thin disc has formed afterwards within it. We also find that the thick disc stars have an internal origin as opposed to have their stars accreted during encounters. The work regarding ESO 533-4 has recently been published in Comer?n et al. 2015, A&A, 584, 34.