1 Kinematics of Stellar Populations with RAVE data

We study the kinematics of the Galactic thin and thick disk populations us-ing stars from the RAVE survey’s second data release together with distance estimates from Breddels et al. (2009). The velocity distribution exhibits the expected moving groups present in the solar neighborhood. We separate thick and thin disk stars by applying the X (stellar-population) criterion of Schuster et al. (1993), which takes into account both kinematic and metallicity informa-tion. For 1906 thin disk and 110 thick disk stars classified in this way, we find a vertical velocity dispersion, mean rotational velocity and mean orbital eccen-tricity of (σW, 〈VΦ〉, 〈e〉)thin = (18±0.3 km s−1, 223±0.4 km s−1, 0.07±0.07) and (σW, 〈VΦ〉, 〈e〉)thick = (35±2 km s−1, 163±2 km s−1, 0.31±0.16), respectively. From the radial Jeans equation, we derive a thick disk scale length in the range 1.5 − 2.2 kpc, whose greatest uncertainty lies in the adopted form of the under-lying potential. The shape of the orbital eccentricity distribution indicates that the thick disk stars in our sample most likely formed in situ with minor gas-ric