Formation of Galactic Disks. I. Why Did the Milky Way’s Disk Form Unusually Early?

Abstract Recent results from spectroscopic and astrometric surveys of nearby stars suggest that the stellar disk of our Milky Way (MW) was formed quite early, within the first few billion years of its evolution. Chemokinematic signatures of disk formation in cosmological zoom-in simulations appear to be in tension with these data, implying that MW-like disk formation is delayed in simulations. We investigate the formation of galactic disks using a representative sample of MW-like galaxies from the cosmological volume simulation TNG50. We find that on average MW-mass disks indeed form later than the local data suggest. However, their formation time and metallicity exhibit a substantial scatter, such that ∼10% of MW-mass galaxies form disks early, similar to the MW. Thus, although the MW is unusual, it is consistent with the overall population of MW-mass disk galaxies. The direct MW analogs assemble most of their mass early, ≳10 Gyr ago, and are not affected by destructive mergers after that. In addition, these galaxies form their disks during the early enrichment stage when the interstellar medium metallicity increases rapidly, with only ∼25% of early-forming disks being as metal-poor as the MW was at the onset of disk formation, Fe/H ≈ −1.0. In contrast, most MW-mass galaxies either form disks from already enriched material or experience late destructive mergers that reset the signatures of galactic disk formation to later times and higher metallicities. Finally, we also show that earlier disk formation leads to more dominant rotationally supported stellar disks at redshift zero.