Published December 11, 2013 | Version v1
Thesis Open

Spatial and Kinematic Properties for a Simulated Population of Runaway Stars

  • 1. Harvard University

Contributors

Supervisor:

  • 1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Description

Runaway stars found in the halo of the Milky Way begin their trajectories in the galactic disk and are ejected either through dynamic interactions or supernova events. To predict the spatial and kinematic properties of runaways, we launch 1200000 stars of 6 different masses, half originating from the dynamical ejection scenario and half from supernovae ejection, into a Galactic potential and compute their trajectories through the Galaxy. Across the masses, the resulting runaway populations have flattened spatial distributions, with higher velocity stars especially concentrated in the galactic disk. Stars ejected by the two different mechanisms display different final spatial and kinematic properties, hence the overall properties of the population depend on the relative occurrences of these mechanisms. This presents a possible method to study the relative contributions of the mechanisms in future studies.

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