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What to expect from dynamical modelling of galactic haloes II: the spherical Jeans equation

Wang, W.; Han, J.; Cole, S.; More, S.; Frenk, C.; Schaller, M.

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Authors

W. Wang

J. Han

S. More

M. Schaller



Abstract

The spherical Jeans equation (SJE) is widely used in dynamical modelling of the Milky Way (MW) halo potential. We use haloes and galaxies from the cosmological Millennium-II simulation and hydrodynamical APOSTLE simulations to investigate the performance of the SJE in recovering the underlying mass profiles of MW mass haloes. The best-fitting halo mass and concentration parameters scatter by 25% and 40% around their input values, respectively, when dark matter particles are used as tracers. This scatter becomes as large as a factor of 3 when using star particles instead. This is significantly larger than the estimated statistical uncertainty associated with the use of the SJE. The existence of correlated phase-space structures that violate the steady state assumption of the SJE as well as non-spherical geometries are the principal sources of the scatter. Binary haloes show larger scatter because they are more aspherical in shape and have a more perturbed dynamical state. Our results confirm that the number of independent phase-space structures sets an intrinsic limiting precision on dynamical inferences based on the steady state assumption. Modelling with a radius-independent velocity anisotropy, or using tracers within a limited outer radius, result in significantly larger scatter, but the ensemble-averaged measurement over the whole halo sample is approximately unbiased.

Citation

Wang, W., Han, J., Cole, S., More, S., Frenk, C., & Schaller, M. (2018). What to expect from dynamical modelling of galactic haloes II: the spherical Jeans equation. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 476(4), 5669-5680. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty706

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 11, 2018
Online Publication Date Mar 15, 2018
Publication Date Jun 1, 2018
Deposit Date Apr 5, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
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 476
Issue 4
Pages 5669-5680
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty706

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Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2017 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.






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