A spectroscopic survey of thick disc stars outside the solar
  neighbourhood
  We performed a spectroscopic survey of nearly 700 stars probing the galactic
thick disc far from the solar neighbourhood towards the galactic coordinates
(l~277, b~47). The derived effective temperatures, surface gravities and
overall metallicities were then combined with stellar evolution isochrones,
radial velocities and proper motions to derive the distances, kinematics and
orbital parameters of the sample stars. The targets belonging to each galactic
component (thin disc, thick disc, halo) were selected either on their
kinematics or according to their position above the galactic plane, and the
vertical gradients were also estimated. We present here atmospheric parameters,
distances and kinematics for this sample, and a comparison of our kinematic and
metallicity distributions with the Besancon model of the Milky Way. The thick
disc far from the solar neighbourhood is found to differ only slightly from the
thick disc properties as derived in the solar vicinity. For regions where the
thick disc dominates, we measured vertical velocity and metallicity trends of
d(V_phi)/dZ = 19 +/- 8 km/s/kpc and d[M/H]/dZ = -0.14 +/- 0.05 dex/kpc,
respectively. These trends can be explained as a smooth transition between the
different galactic components, although intrinsic gradients could not be
excluded. In addition, a correlation d(V_phi)/d[M/H] = -45 +/- 12 km/s/dex
between the orbital velocity and the metallicity of the thick disc is detected.
This gradient is inconsistent with the SDSS photometric survey analysis, which
did not detect any such trend, and challenges radial migration models of thick
disc formation. Estimations of the scale heights and scale lengths for
different metallicity bins of the thick disc result in consistent values, with
hR~3.4 \pm 0.7 kpc, and hZ~694 \pm 45 pc, showing no evidence of relics of
destroyed massive satellites.
