Related papers: Hidden depths in the local Universe: The Stellar S…
Upcoming ground and space-based surveys are poised to illuminate low surface brightness tidal features, providing a new observable connection to dark matter physics. From imaging of tidal debris, the morphology of stellar streams can be…
Tidal streams from existing and destroyed satellite galaxies populate the outer regions of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). This inhomogeneous debris can be studied without many of the obstacles that plague Milky Way research. We review the…
Hundreds of globular clusters and dwarf galaxies encircle the Milky Way. Many of these systems have undergone partial disruption due to tidal forces, littering the halo with stellar streams. These tidal tails are sensitive to the Galactic…
We present six simulations of galactic stellar haloes formed by the tidal disruption of accreted dwarf galaxies in a fully cosmological setting. Our model is based on the Aquarius project, a suite of high resolution N-body simulations of…
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…
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…
If the Galaxy formed hierarchically through the accretion of smaller satellite galaxies we might hope to find signatures of this in the halo's phase-space distribution. I review theoretical ideas about what form these signatures should…
The $\Lambda$CDM cosmological scenario predicts that our Galaxy should contain hundreds of stellar streams at the solar vicinity, fossil relics of the merging history of the Milky Way and more generally of the hierarchical growth of…
We investigate the stellar populations of a sample of Tidal Dwarf Galaxies, combining observations and evolutionary synthesis models to try and reveal their formation mechanism. On optical images we select a first sample of TDGs for which…
Observations show that stellar streams originating in satellite dwarf galaxies are frequent in the Universe. While such events are predicted by theory, it is not clear how many of the streams that are generated are washed out afterwards to…
We develop a semi-analytic method for determining the phase-space population of tidal debris along the orbit of a disrupting satellite galaxy and illustrate its use with a number of applications. We use this method to analyze Zhao's…
We use simulations of merging galaxies to explore the sensitivity of the morphology of tidal tails to variations of the halo mass distributions in the parent galaxies. Our goal is to constrain the mass of dark halos in well-known merging…
We use N-body cosmological simulations and empirical galaxy models to study the merger history of dwarf-mass galaxies (with M_halo~10^10 M_Sun). Our input galaxy models describe the stellar mass-halo mass relation, and the galaxy occupation…
In a sample of 54 galaxy clusters (0.04<z<0.15) containing 3551 early-type galaxies suitable for study, we identify those with tidal features both interactively and automatically. We find that ~3% have tidal features that can be detected…
We use a simulation performed within the Constrained Local UniversE Simulation (CLUES) project to study a realistic Local Group-like object. We employ this group as a numerical laboratory for studying the evolution of the population of its…
Thin halo star streams originate from the evaporation of globular clusters and therefore provide information about the early epoch globular cluster population. The observed tidal tails from halo globular clusters in the Milky Way are much…
We present preliminary results of a long-term project to investigate the process of accretion and tidal disruption of dSph satellites in the Galactic halo and, in particular, to search for new tidal tails in a sample of nearby dSph…
In hierarchical cosmological models, galaxies grow in mass through the continual accretion of smaller ones. The tidal disruption of these systems is expected to result in loosely bound stars surrounding the galaxy, at distances that reach…
A candidate diffuse stellar substructure was previously reported in the halo of the nearby dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 4449 by Karachentsev et al. We map and analyze this feature using a unique combination of deep integrated-light images…
In this work, we explore the idea that substructures like stellar clusters could be formed from the tidal stream produced in galactic minor mergers. We use $N$-body and SPH simulations of satellite galaxies interacting with a larger galaxy.…