How many components? Quantifying the complexity of the metallicity distribution in the Milky Way bulge with APOGEE
How many components? Quantifying the complexity of the metallicity distribution in the Milky Way bulge with APOGEE
We use data of $\sim$13,000 stars from the SDSS/APOGEE survey to study the shape of the bulge MDF within the region $|\ell|\leq11^\circ$ and $|b|\leq13^\circ$, and spatially constrained to ${\rm R_{GC}\leq3.5}$ kpc. We apply Gaussian Mixture Modeling and Non-negative Matrix Factorization decomposition techniques to identify the optimal number and the properties …