Effects of chaos on the detectability of stellar streams

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

doi:10.1093/mnras/stz3505

Effects of chaos on the detectability of stellar streams

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

Authors

Martín Mestre

Claudio Llinares

Daniel D Carpintero

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

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This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ©: 2020 The Author(s) . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.