Research Division Seminar
Reconstructing the history of the Milky Way in the era of large spectroscopic surveys

Abstract

At present, our understanding of the formation history of the MW is limited due to the complexity of observing the imprints of accretion events and of reproducing them in numerical simulations. Moreover, though being the only galaxy, in which the Galactic potential can be probed in detail, the distribution of mass in the MW, and hence of the dark matter, is poorly constraint, especially at large distances. In addition, the MW is not isolated, and it has recently been suggested that the infall of the LMC can induce a perturbation in the stellar and dark matter distribution of the MW. As a consequence, the details of the formation history of our Galaxy are still unknown, such as the number of accretion events, the mass of the accreted galaxies, and the epoch of these events. Yet, this information is crucial to understand our environment and to constrain the theoretical models and simulations that try to reproduce it. In this talk I will present recent works that have been conducted to better characterized our Galaxy and its history thanks to new large scale surveys that provide detailed dynamical and chemical information. I will also present the major improvement that will bring the new generation of large, multi-aspect surveys, to study both our Galactic history, as well as the fundamental nature of the dark matter.