North-South asymmetries in the Galactic thin disk associated with the vertical phase spiral as seen using LAMOST-Gaia stars

We select 1,052,469 (754,635) thin disk stars from Gaia eDR3 and LAMOST DR7 in the range of Galactocentric radius R (guiding center radius R_g) from 8 to 11 kpc to investigate the asymmetries between the North and South of the disk midplane. More specifically we analyze the vertical velocity dispersion profiles (σ_v_z(z)) in different bins of R (R_g) and [Fe/H]. We find troughs in the profiles of σ_v_z(z) located in both the North (z ∼ 0.7 kpc) and South (z ∼ -0.5 kpc) of the disk at all radial and chemical bins studied. The difference between the Northern and Southern vertical velocity dispersion profiles (Δσ_v_z(|z|)) shows a shift between curves of different R and R_g. A similar shift exists in these NS asymmetry profiles further divided into different [Fe/H] ranges. The sample binned with R_g more clearly displays the features in the velocity dispersion profiles. The shift in the peaks of the Δσ_v_z profiles and the variation in the phase spiral shape binned by metallicity indicate the variation of the vertical potential profiles and the radial metallicity gradient. The wave-like signal in NS asymmetry of σ_v_z(z) largely originates from phase spiral; while the NS asymmetry profiles of [Fe/H] only display a weak wave-like feature near solar radius. We perform a test particle simulation to qualitatively reproduce the observed results. A quantitative explanation of the NS asymmetry in the metallicity profile needs careful consideration of the spiral shape and the perturbation model, and we leave this for future work.