Related papers: Clumpy Streams from Clumpy Halos: Detecting Missin…
Stellar streams, long, thin streams of stars, have been used as sensitive probes of dark matter substructure for over two decades. Gravitational interactions between dark matter substructures and streams lead to the formation of low-density…
Tidal streams of globular clusters are ideal tracers of the Galactic gravitational potential. Compared to the few known, complex and diffuse dwarf-galaxy streams, they are kinematically cold, have thin morphologies and are abundant in the…
CDM simulations predict that there are hundreds of lumps of with masses greater than 10e7 solar masses in the Milky Way halo. However, we know of only a dozen dwarf satellites close to this mass. Are these lumps simply lacking in stars or…
We use N-body simulations to model the tidal disruption of a star cluster in a Milky-Way-sized dark matter halo, which results in a narrow stream comparable to (but slightly wider than) Pal-5 or GD-1. The mean Galactic dark matter halo is…
As a result of their internal dynamical coherence, thin stellar streams formed by disrupting globular clusters (GCs) can act as detectors of dark matter (DM) substructure in the Galactic halo. Perturbations induced by close flybys amplify…
The Cold Dark Matter paradigm predicts vast numbers of dark matter sub-halos to be orbiting in galactic halos. The sub-halos are detectable through the gaps they create gaps in stellar streams. The gap-rate is an integral over the density…
In the past decade, surveys of the stellar component of the Galaxy have revealed a number of streams from tidally disrupted dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. Simulations of hierarchical structure formation in LCDM cosmologies predict…
Pal 5 is a low mass, low velocity dispersion, globular cluster with spectacular tidal tails. We use the SDSS DR8 data to extend the density measurements of the trailing star stream to 23 degrees distance from the cluster, at which point the…
We use numerical simulations to examine the substructure within galactic and cluster mass halos that form within a hierarchical universe. Clusters are easily reproduced with a steep mass spectrum of thousands of substructure clumps that…
Thin stellar streams originating from globular clusters are among the most sensitive tracers of low-mass dark-matter subhalos. Joint analysis of the entire population of stellar streams will place the most robust constraints on the…
Stellar streams from disrupted globular clusters are dynamically cold structures that are sensitive to perturbations from dark matter subhalos, allowing them in principle to trace the dark matter substructure in the Milky Way. We model,…
Ample observational capabilities exist today to detect the small density perturbations that low-mass dark matter subhaloes impart on stellar streams from disrupting Galactic satellites. In anticipation of these observations, we investigate…
Stellar streams from disrupted globular clusters are excellent probes of dark matter (DM) subhalos. Observed Milky Way streams display a remarkable diversity of features: spurs, gaps, kinks, cocoons, and density variations, many attributed…
Thin stellar streams, such as those resulting from the tidal disruption of globular clusters, have long been known and used as probes of the gravitational potential of our Galaxy, both its visible and dark contents. In particular, the…
The GD-1 star stream is currently the best available for identifying density fluctuations, "gaps", along its length as a test of the LCDM prediction of large numbers of dark matter sub-halos orbiting in the halo. Density variations of some…
Only in the Milky Way is it possible to conduct an experiment which uses stellar streams to detect low-mass dark matter subhaloes. In smooth and static host potentials, tidal tails of disrupting satellites appear highly symmetric. However,…
Simulations of tidal streams show that close encounters with dark matter subhalos induce density gaps and distortions in on-sky path along the streams. Accordingly, observing disrupted streams in the Galactic halo would substantiate the…
A critical challenge to the cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm is that there are fewer satellites observed around the Milky Way than found in simulations of dark matter substructure. We show that there is a match between the observed satellite…
GD-1 is a long, thin, Milky Way star stream that has readily visible density variations along its length. We quantify the locations, sizes and statistical significance of the density structure, i.e. gaps, using a set of scaled filters. The…
We study numerical simulations of satellite galaxy disruption in a potential resembling that of the Milky Way. Our goal is to assess whether a merger origin for the stellar halo would leave observable fossil structure in the phase-space…