The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way's inner stellar
  halo and thick disk
  The assembly process of our Galaxy can be retrieved using the motions and
chemistry of individual stars. Chemo-dynamical studies of the nearby halo have
long hinted at the presence of multiple components such as streams, clumps,
duality and correlations between the stars' chemical abundances and orbital
parameters. More recently, the analysis of two large stellar surveys have
revealed the presence of a well-populated chemical elemental abundance
sequence, of two distinct sequences in the colour-magnitude diagram, and of a
prominent slightly retrograde kinematic structure all in the nearby halo, which
may trace an important accretion event experienced by the Galaxy. Here report
an analysis of the kinematics, chemistry, age and spatial distribution of stars
in a relatively large volume around the Sun that are mainly linked to two major
Galactic components, the thick disk and the stellar halo. We demonstrate that
the inner halo is dominated by debris from an object which at infall was
slightly more massive than the Small Magellanic Cloud, and which we refer to as
Gaia-Enceladus. The stars originating in Gaia-Enceladus cover nearly the full
sky, their motions reveal the presence of streams and slightly retrograde and
elongated trajectories. Hundreds of RR Lyrae stars and thirteen globular
clusters following a consistent age-metallicity relation can be associated to
Gaia-Enceladus on the basis of their orbits. With an estimated 4:1 mass-ratio,
the merger with Gaia-Enceladus must have led to the dynamical heating of the
precursor of the Galactic thick disk and therefore contributed to the formation
of this component approximately 10 Gyr ago. These findings are in line with
simulations of galaxy formation, which predict that the inner stellar halo
should be dominated by debris from just a few massive progenitors.
