Stellar Wakes from Dark Matter Subhalos
Name
PhysRevLett.120.211101.pdf
Size
369.71 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7f0c58fde8bd8a35f6712a8fbc44de13
Author(s)
Buschmann, Malte
Kopp, Joachim
Safdi, Benjamin R.
Wu, Chih-Liang
Date Issued
May 2018
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Buschmann, Malte et al. "Stellar Wakes from Dark Matter Subhalos." Physical Review Letters 120, 21 (May 2018): 211101 © 2018 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We propose a novel method utilizing stellar kinematic data to detect low-mass substructure in the Milky Way’s dark matter halo. By probing characteristic wakes that a passing dark matter subhalo leaves in the phase-space distribution of ambient halo stars, we estimate sensitivities down to subhalo masses of ∼10[superscript 7] M[subscript ⊙] or below. The detection of such subhalos would have implications for dark matter and cosmological models that predict modifications to the halo-mass function at low halo masses. We develop an analytic formalism for describing the perturbed stellar phase-space distributions, and we demonstrate through idealized simulations the ability to detect subhalos using the phase-space model and a likelihood framework. Our method complements existing methods for low-mass subhalo searches, such as searches for gaps in stellar streams, in that we can localize the positions and velocities of the subhalos today.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.211101
