Effects of chaos on the detectability of stellar streams

Mestre, Martín; Llinares, Claudio; Carpintero, Daniel D

Abstract

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 the point in which it is impossible to detect them. Here, we study how these diffusion times are affected by the fact that typical gravitational potentials of the host galaxies can sustain chaotic orbits. We do this by comparing the behaviour of simulated stellar streams that reside in chaotic or non-chaotic regions of the phase space. We find that chaos does reduce the time interval in which streams can be detected. By analysing detectability criteria in configuration and velocity space, we find that the impact of these results on the observations depends on the quality of both the data and the underlying stellar halo model. For all the stellar streams, we obtain a similar upper limit to the detectable mass.

Citation

Mestre, M., Llinares, C., & Carpintero, D. D. (2020). Effects of chaos on the detectability of stellar streams. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 492(3), 4398-4408. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz3505

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 9, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Dec 13, 2019
• Publication Date: Mar 31, 2020
• Deposit Date: Mar 25, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 31, 2020
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 492
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 4398-4408
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz3505
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1267379