Chemical fingerprinting of stellar populations in the Milky Way halo

The idea of ``chemically fingerprinting`` stars to their birth systems has been discussed over the last decade. Here we present an investigation of the chemical abundance patterns of halo substructures using high-resolution spectra. In particular, we study the abundances of the α-like element titanium (Ti) and the s-process elements yttrium (Y) and lanthanum (La) for M giant candidates of the Galactic Anticenter Stellar Structure (GASS, also known as the Monoceros Ring) and the Triangulum-Andromeda (TriAnd) Star Cloud. We apply ``chemical fingerprinting`` to the GASS/Monoceros Ring and TriAnd Star Cloud, to explore the origins of the two systems and the hypothesized connections between them. GASS has been debated either to originate from a part (e.g., warp) of the Galactic disk or tidal debris of a disrupted Milky Way (MW) satellite galaxy. Our exploration shows that GASS is indeed made of stars from a dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy, although we still can not rule out the possibility that GASS was dynamically created out of a previously formed outer MW disk. And whereas the TriAnd Star Cloud has been assumed to come from the tidal disruption of the same accreted MW satellite as the GASS/Monoceros Ring, our comparison of the abundance patterns in GASS and TriAnd M giants suggests that the TriAnd Star Cloud is likely an independent halo substructure unrelated to the GASS/Monoceros Ring. Furthermore, our findings also suggest that the MW may have accreted other satellites in addition to the on-going, well-known Sagittarius (Sgr) dwarf galaxy.