Chronologically dating the early assembly of the Milky Way

Josefina Montalbán, John Ted Mackereth, Andrea Miglio, Fiorenzo Vincenzo, Cristina Chiappini, Gaël Buldgen, Benoît Mosser, Arlette Noels, Richard Scuflaire, Mathieu Vrard, Emma Willett, Guy R. Davies, Oliver Hall, Martin Bo Nielsen, Saniya Khan, Ben M. Rendle, Walter E. van Rossem, Jason W. Ferguson, William J. Chaplin

Published 2020-06-02Version 1

The Milky Way, like other disc galaxies, underwent violent mergers and accretion of smaller satellite galaxies in its early history. Thanks to $\mathit Gaia$-DR2 and spectroscopic surveys, the stellar remnants of such mergers have been identified. The chronological dating of such events is crucial to uncover the formation and evolution of the Galaxy at high redshift, but it has so far been challenging owing to difficulties in obtaining precise ages for these oldest stars. Here we combine asteroseismology -- the study of stellar oscillations -- with kinematics and chemical abundances, to estimate precise stellar ages ($\sim$ 11%) for a sample of stars observed by the $\mathit{Kepler}$ space mission. Crucially, this sample includes not only some of the oldest stars that were formed inside the Galaxy, but also stars formed externally and subsequently accreted onto the Milky Way. Leveraging this unprecedented temporal resolution in age, we provide overwhelming evidence in favour of models in which the Galaxy had already formed a significant population of its stars (which now reside mainly in its thick disc) before the in-fall of the satellite galaxy $\mathit{Gaia}$-$\mathit{Enceladus}$ 10 billions years ago.