Related papers: The structure of accreted stellar streams
Stream stars removed by tides from their progenitor satellite galaxy or globular cluster act as a group of test particles on neighboring orbits, probing the gravitational field of the Milky Way. While constraints from individual streams…
We present an analysis of the mechanics of thin streams, which are formed following the tidal disruption of cold, low-mass clusters in the potential of a massive host galaxy. The analysis makes extensive use of action-angle variables, in…
If the favored hierarchical cosmological model is correct, then the Milky Way system should have accreted ~100-200 luminous satellite galaxies in the past \~12 Gyr. We model this process using a hybrid semi-analytic plus N-body approach…
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…
We present the results of fitting a flexible stellar stream density model to a collection of thirteen streams around the Milky Way, using photometric data from DES, DECaLS, and Pan-STARRS. We construct density maps for each stream and…
A central tenet of the current cosmological paradigm is that galaxies grow over time through the accretion of smaller systems. Here, we present new kinematic measurements near the centre of one of the densest pronounced substructures, the…
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…
We investigate the physics of gas accretion in young stellar clusters. Accretion in clusters is a dynamic phenomenon as both the stars and the gas respond to the same gravitational potential. Accretion rates are highly non-uniform with…
The Gaia mission promises to deliver precision astrometry at an unprecedented level, heralding a new era for discerning the kinematic and spatial coordinates of stars in our Galaxy. Here, we present a new technique for estimating the age of…
We investigate the possibility that the recently discovered Hercules Milky Way satellite is in fact a stellar stream in formation, thereby explaining its very elongated shape with an axis ratio of 3 to 1. Under the assumption that Hercules…
A recent model prediction claimed that exists a correlation between the formation scenarios of globular clusters, i.e., whether they formed in situ, or in dark matter halos that were accreted into the Milky way, with some properties of…
Accreted stars in the Milky Way (MW) preserve information about the progenitor galaxies where they formed in their chemical and kinematic properties. In this study, we use the chemo-dynamical signatures in the merger debris to approximate…
In order to find the possible progenitors of Milky Way globular clusters, we perform orbit integrations to track the orbits of 170 Galactic globular clusters and the eleven classical Milky Way satellite galaxies backwards in time for 11 Gyr…
Several scenarios have been suggested to explain the phase-space distribution of the Milky Way (MW) satellite galaxies in a disc of satellites (DoS). To quantitatively compare these different possibilities, a new method analysing angular…
We present a simple physical mechanism that can account for the observed stellar mass spectrum for masses $\ms \simgreat 0.5 \solm$. The model depends solely on the competitive accretion that occurs in stellar clusters where each star's…
In the hierarchical formation scenario in which the outer halo of the Milky Way is the result of the continuous accretion of low-mass galaxies, a fraction of the Galactic globular cluster system might have originated in and been accreted…
Observed accretion rates onto the Milky-Way and other local spirals fall short of that required to sustain star formation for cosmological timescales. A potential avenue for this unseen accretion is an inflow in the volume-filling hot phase…
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…
Stellar streams are sensitive tracers of the gravitational potential, which is typically assumed to be static in the inner Galaxy. However, massive mergers like Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus can impart torques on the stellar disk of the Milky Way…
Standard cosmology predicts that dwarfs were the first galaxies to be formed in the Universe and that many of them merge afterwards to form bigger galaxies such as the Milky Way. This process would have left behind traces such as tidal…