Related papers: Milky Way Mass Models for Orbit Calculations

Quantifying the connection between galaxies and their host dark matter halos has been key for testing cosmological models on various scales. Below $M_\star \sim 10^9\,M_\odot$, such studies have primarily relied on the satellite galaxy…

In the past several years high resolution kinematic data sets from Milky Way satellite galaxies have confirmed earlier indications that these systems are dark matter dominated objects. Further understanding of what these galaxies reveal…

The positions and velocities of stellar streams have been used to constrain the mass and shape of the Milky Way's dark matter halo. Several extragalactic streams have already been detected, though it has remained unclear what can be…

Modelling perturbations of the Milky Way (MW) halo induced by the infall of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) offers new avenues to constrain the dark matter (DM) distribution in our Galaxy. A key observable is the reflex motion of the MW…

We present a new method for determining the Galactic gravitational potential based on forward modeling of tidal stellar streams. We use this method to test the performance of smooth and static analytic potentials in representing realistic…

I provide a model rotation curve for the Milky Way that matches the details of the terminal velocity curve normalized to the Galactocentric distance $R_0 = 8.122$ kpc obtained by the GRAVITY collaboration and the corresponding circular…

We describe a major survey of the Milky Way halo designed to test for kinematic substructure caused by destruction of accreted satellites. We use the Washington photometric system to identify halo stars efficiently for spectroscopic…

Stars slingshotted by the supermassive black hole at the Galactic centre will escape the Milky Way so quickly that their trajectories will be almost straight lines. Previous works have shown how these `hypervelocity stars' are subsequently…

The history of the Magellanic Clouds is investigated using N-body hydrodynamic simulations where the initial conditions are set by a genetic algorithm. This technique allows us to identify possible orbits for the Magellanic Clouds around…

We map the stellar structure of the Galactic thick disk and halo by applying color-magnitude diagram (CMD) fitting to photometric data from the SEGUE survey, allowing, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of their structure at both…

We present and apply a method to infer the mass of the Milky Way (MW) by comparing the dynamics of MW satellites to those of model satellites in the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamics simulations. A distribution function (DF) for galactic…

The rotation curve (RC) of the Milky Way out to $\sim$ 100 kpc has been constructed using $\sim$ 16,000 primary red clump giants (PRCGs) in the outer disk selected from the LSS-GAC and the SDSS-III/APOGEE survey, combined with $\sim$ 5700…

We present a simple method for fitting parametrized mass models of the Milky Way to observational constraints. We take a Bayesian approach which allows us to take into account input from photometric and kinematic data, and expectations from…

Blue Horizontal Branch (BHB) stars, excellent distant tracers for probing the Milky Way's halo density profile, are distinguished in the $(g-r)_0$ vs $(i-z)_0$ color space from another class of stars, blue straggler stars (BSs). We develop…

High-velocity particles ( $v>v_\mathrm{esc}$) in the Milky Way are rare but nonetheless important to characterize due to their impact on dark matter (DM) direct detection experiments. We select halos similar in mass to the Milky Way in a…

We report the detection of a 282 $^{+34}_{-31}$ pc-sized core in the center of Milky Way dark matter halo at $68\%$ confidence level by using the micro-lensing event rate sky map data from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE)…

The sensitivity of direct detection experiments depends on the phase-space distribution of dark matter near the Sun, which can be modeled theoretically using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies. However,…

Well-motivated particle physics theories predict the existence of particles (such as sterile neutrinos) which acquire non-negligible thermal velocities in the early universe. These particles could behave as warm dark matter (WDM) and…

We introduce the flattening equation, which relates the shape of the dark halo to the angular velocity dispersions and the density of a tracer population of stars. It assumes spherical alignment of the velocity dispersion tensor, as seen in…

We determine the Milky Way (MW) mass profile inferred from fitting physically motivated models to the Gaia DR2 Galactic rotation curve and other data. Using various hydrodynamical simulations of MW-mass haloes, we show that the presence of…