Title: Constraining the Milky Way assembly history with Galactic Archaeology. Ludwig Biermann Award Lecture 2015,
Abstract: The aim of Galactic Archaeology is to recover the evolutionary history of the
Milky Way from its present day kinematical and chemical state. Because stars
move away from their birth sites, the current dynamical information alone is
not sufficient for this task. The chemical composition of stellar atmospheres,
on the other hand, is largely preserved over the stellar lifetime and, together
with accurate ages, can be used to recover the birthplaces of stars currently
found at the same Galactic radius. In addition to the availability of large
stellar samples with accurate 6D kinematics and chemical abundance
measurements, this requires detailed modeling with both dynamical and chemical
evolution taken into account. An important first step is to understand the
variety of dynamical processes that can take place in the Milky Way, including
the perturbative effects of both internal (bar and spiral structure) and
external (infalling satellites) agents. We discuss here (1) how to constrain
the Galactic bar, spiral structure, and merging satellites by their effect on
the local and global disc phase-space, (2) the effect of multiple patterns on
the disc dynamics, and (3) the importance of radial migration and merger
perturbations for the formation of the Galactic thick disc. Finally, we discuss
the construction of Milky Way chemo-dynamical models and relate to
observations.