A Slowly Flattening Milky Way Stellar Disk: Investigating Galactic Warping through Dynamical Orbital Inclinations of Open Clusters

Abstract

By evaluating angular momentum directions of open cluster (OC) samples across various Galactocentric radii, we assessed their orbital plane inclinations. Our findings reveal that, without considering the local tilt of the Galactic disk near the sun, our results are consistent with previous studies on Classical Cepheids (CCs). Notably, the warp precession derived from OCs closely mirror those of CCs. Nonetheless, we observed a systematic deviation between the geometric and dynamic warps, attributable to the tilt of the local disk. We identified a systematic vertical motion in the local region, associated with the warping feature near the solar vicinity. Ignoring this motion leads to underestimates of orbital plane inclinations compared to those derived from geometric positions. Our study indicates consistency between the inclinations derived from orbital dynamics and geometric positions at a vertical velocity of the sun relative to the Galactic mid-plane of Vz_sun = 9.4(0.2) km/s. This value is approximately 2 km/s higher than the historically estimated solar peculiar motion, W_sun, primarily due to an approximately 0.6-degree tilt of the local plane. Analysis suggests that previous estimates of the Galactic disk's warping precession rate may have been overestimated due to local warping influences. The findings indicate that the precession oscillates around zero and that the Galactic warp is progressively flattening. Additionally, the line of nodes tends to become consistent across various Galactocentric radii over a timescale of 100-200 million years.