No Arabic abstract
We simulate tidal streams in the presence and absence of substructures inside the zero redshift snapshot of the Via Lactea II (VL-2) simulation. A halo finder is used to remove and isolate the subhalos found inside the high resolution dark matter halo of VL-2, and the potentials for both the main halo and all the subhalos are constructed individually using the self-consistent field (SCF) method. This allows us to make direct comparison of tidal streams between a smooth halo and a lumpy halo without assuming idealized profiles or triaxial fits. We simulate the kinematics of a star cluster starting with the same orbital position but two different velocities. Although these two orbits are only moderately eccentric and have similar apo- and pericentric distances, we find that the two streams have very different morphologies. We conclude that our model of the potential of VL-2 can provide insights about tidal streams that have not been explored by previous studies using idealized or axisymmetric models.
The dark matter halos that surround Milky Way-like galaxies in cosmological simulations are, to first order, triaxial. Nearly 30 years ago it was predicted that such triaxial dark matter halos should exhibit steady figure rotation or tumbling motions for durations of several gigayears. The angular frequency of figure rotation predicted by cosmological simulations is described by a log-normal distribution of pattern speed with a median value 0.15hkm/s/kpc (~ 0.15h rad/Gyr ~ 9h deg/Gyr) and a width of 0.83km/s/kpc. These pattern speeds are so small that they have generally been considered both unimportant and undetectable. In this work we show that even this extremely slow figure rotation can significantly alter the structure of extended stellar streams produced by the tidal disruption of satellites in the Milky Way halo. We simulate the behavior of a Sagittarius-like polar tidal stream in triaxial dark matter halos with different shapes, when the halos are rotated about the three principal axes. For pattern speeds typical of cosmological halos we demonstrate, for the first time, that a Sagittarius-like tidal stream would be altered to a degree that is detectable even with current observations. This discovery will potentially allow for a future measurement of figure rotation of the Milky Ways dark halo, and perhaps enabling the first evidence of this relatively unexplored prediction of LambdaCDM.
We simulate the tidal disruption of a collisionless N-body globular star cluster in a total of 300 different orbits selected to have galactocentric radii between 10 and 30 kpc in four dark matter halos: (a) a spherical halo with no subhalos, (b) a spherical halo with subhalos, (c) a realistic halo with no subhalos, and (d) a realistic halo with subhalos. This allows us to isolate and study how the halos (lack of) dynamical symmetry and substructures affect the dispersal of tidal debris. The realistic halos are constructed from the snapshot of the Via Lactea II simulation at redshift zero. We find that the overall halos lack of dynamical symmetry disperses tidal debris to make the streams fluffier, consistent with previous studies of tidal debris of dwarf galaxies in larger orbits than ours in this study. On the other hand, subhalos in realistic potentials can locally enhance the densities along streams, making streams denser than their counterparts in smooth potentials. We show that many long and thin streams can survive in a realistic and lumpy halo for a Hubble time. This suggests that upcoming stellar surveys will likely uncover more thin streams which may contain density gaps that have been shown to be promising probes for dark matter substructures.
The cusp-core problem is one of the main challenges of the cold dark matter paradigm on small scales: the density of a dark matter halo is predicted to rise rapidly toward the center as rho ~ r^alpha with alpha between -1 and -1.5, while such a cuspy profile has not been clearly observed. We have carried out the spatially-resolved mapping of gas dynamics toward a nearby ultra-diffuse galaxy (UDG), AGC 242019. The derived rotation curve of dark matter is well fitted by the cuspy profile as described by the Navarro-Frenk-White model, while the cored profiles including both the pseudo-isothermal and Burkert models are excluded. The halo has alpha=-(0.90+-0.08) at the innermost radius of 0.67 kpc, Mhalo=(3.5+-1.2)E10 Msun and a small concentration of 2.0+-0.36. AGC 242019 challenges alternatives of cold dark matter by constraining the particle mass of fuzzy dark matter to be < 0.11E-22 eV or > 3.3E-22 eV , the cross section of self-interacting dark matter to be < 1.63 cm2/g, and the particle mass of warm dark matter to be > 0.23 keV, all of which are in tension with other constraints. The modified Newtonian dynamics is also inconsistent with a shallow radial acceleration relationship of AGC 242019. For the feedback scenario that transforms a cusp to a core, AGC 242019 disagrees with the stellar-to-halo-mass-ratio dependent model, but agrees with the star-formation-threshold dependent model. As a UDG, AGC 242019 is in a dwarf-size halo with weak stellar feedback, late formation time, a normal baryonic spin and low star formation efficiency (SFR/gas).
Dwarf galaxies that come too close to larger galaxies suffer tidal disruption; the differential gravitational force between one side of the galaxy and the other serves to rip the stars from the dwarf galaxy so that they instead orbit the larger galaxy. This process produces tidal streams of stars, which can be found in the stellar halo of the Milky Way, as well as in halos of other galaxies. This chapter provides a general introduction to tidal streams, including the mechanism through which the streams are created, the history of how they were discovered, and the observational techniques by which they can be detected. In addition, their use in unraveling galaxy formation history and the distribution of dark matter in galaxies is discussed, as is the interaction between these dwarf galaxy satellites and the disk of the larger galaxy.
A cosmological zoom-in simulation which develops into a Milky Way-like halo is started at redshift 7. The initial dark matter distribution is seeded with dense star clusters, median mass $5times 10^5 M_sun$, placed in the largest sub-halos present, which have a median peak circular velocity of 25 kms. Three simulations are initialized using the same dark matter distribution, with the star clusters started on approximately circular orbits having initial median radii 6.8 kpc, 0.14 kpc, and, at the exact center of the sub-halos. The simulations are evolved to the current epoch at which time the median galactic orbital radii of the three sets of clusters are 30, 5 and 16 kpc, with the clusters losing about 2, 50 and 15% of their mass, respectively. Clusters started at small orbital radii have so much tidal forcing that they are often not in equilibrium. Clusters started at larger sub-halo radii have a velocity dispersion that declines smoothly to $simeq$20% of the central value at $simeq$20 half mass radii. The clusters started at the sub-halo centers can show a rise in velocity dispersion beyond 3-5 half mass radii. That is, the clusters formed without local dark matter always have stellar mass dominated kinematics at all radii, whereas about 25% of the clusters started at sub-halo centers have remnant local dark matter.