Related papers: Does the Milky Way have a Maximal Disk?
We review most dynamical constraints on the gravitational field of spiral galaxies in general, and of the Milky Way in particular. Such constraints are of prime importance for determining the characteristics of the putative dark matter…
This review summarises the invited presentation I gave on the Milky Way disc. The idea underneath was to touch those topics that can be considered hot nowadays in the Galactic disk research: the reality of the thick disk, the spiral…
We study the spatial distribution of satellite galaxies by assuming that they follow the dark matter distribution. This assumption is supported by semi-analytical studies based on high-resolution numerical simulations. We find that for a…
Stars and their kinematics provide one of the tools available for studies of the shapes of galaxies and their halos. In this review I focus on two specific applications: the shape of the Milky Way dark halo and the shape of the LMC disk.…
Cosmologists have often considered the Milky Way as a typical spiral galaxy, and its properties have considerably influenced the current scheme of galaxy formation. Here we compare the general properties of the Milky Way disk and halo with…
Massive satellite accretions onto early galactic disks can lead to the deposition of dark matter in disk-like configurations that co-rotate with the galaxy. This phenomenon has potentially dramatic consequences for dark matter detection…
The size of a galaxy is one of the fundamental parameters that reflects its growth and assembly history. Traditionally, the size of the Milky Way has been characterized by the scale length of the disk, based on the assumption of an…
We study the vertical stellar distribution of the Milky Way thin disk in detail with particular focus on the outer disk. We treat the galactic disk as a gravitationally coupled, three-component system consisting of stars, atomic hydrogen…
The ubiquitous presence of dark matter in the universe is today a central tenet in modern cosmology and astrophysics. Ranging from the smallest galaxies to the observable universe, the evidence for dark matter is compelling in dwarfs,…
A galactic disk in a spiral galaxy is generally believed to be embedded in an extended dark matter halo, which dominates its dynamics in the outer parts. However, the shape of the halo is not clearly understood. Here we show that the dark…
A series of arguments is presented for heavy galaxy disks not only in the optical regions, but also in the dark matter dominated regions of spirals. We are testing this possibility with extreme maximum disk N-body models without any…
I review current efforts to measure the mean density of dark matter near the Sun. This encodes valuable dynamical information about our Galaxy and is also of great importance for 'direct detection' dark matter experiments. I discuss…
We study the gravitational lensing effects of spiral galaxies by taking a model of the Milky Way and computing its lensing properties. The model is composed of a spherical Hernquist bulge, a Miyamoto-Nagai disc and an isothermal halo. As a…
Stellar mass is the most fundamental property of a galaxy. While it has been robustly measured for millions of external galaxies, it remains poorly constrained for the Milky Way because of the strong selection effect from our inside…
The Large Magellanic Cloud is the most massive satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, with an estimated mass exceeding a tenth of the mass of the Milky Way. Just past its closest approach of about 50 kpc, and flying by the Milky Way at an…
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is a benchmark for understanding disk galaxies. It is the only galaxy whose formation history can be studied using the full distribution of stars from white dwarfs to supergiants. The oldest components provide us…
Microlensing provides a unique tool to break the stellar to dark matter degeneracy in the inner Milky Way. We combine N-body dynamical models fitted to the Milky Way's Boxy/Peanut bulge with exponential disk models outside this, and compute…
Our understanding of the Milky Way disk is rapidly improving with the recent advent of the high quality and vast amount of observational data. We summarize our current view of the structure of the Milky Way disk, such as the masses and…
In a LCDM cosmology, the Milky Way accretes satellites into the stellar disc. We use cosmological simulations to assess the frequency of near disc plane and higher inclination accretion events, and collisionless simulations of satellite…
A parameterized model of the mass distribution within the Milky Way is fitted to the available observational constraints. The most important single parameter is the ratio of the scale length R_d* of the stellar disk to R0. The disk and…