Publications (40)
The Local Group on FIRE: Dwarf galaxy populations across a suite of hydrodynamic simulations
Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Philip F. Hopkins, Andrew Wetzel +8
We present a new set of high-resolution hydrodynamic cosmological zoom-in simulations that apply the Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE) physics to both Local Group (LG)-like…
Rise of the forsaken relics: connecting present-day stellar streams and phase-mixed galaxies to the Epoch of Reionization
Aritra Kundu, Robyn Sanderson, Adam Lidz +6
The `near-far' approach to studying reionization leverages the star formation histories of the Milky Way (MW) or Local Group (LG) galaxies, derived from resolved photometry, to inf…
R2-D2: Roman and Rubin -- From Data to Discovery
Suvi Gezari, Misty Bentz, Kishalay De +28
The NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (Rubin), will transform our view of the wide-field sky, with si…
The Dynamics of Old Inner Galaxy Stars in Milky Way-mass Galaxies Using FIRE-2 Simulations
Emma Tasso, Madeline Lucey, Robyn Sanderson +2
Understanding how galaxies like the Milky Way assembled over cosmic time remains a central question in astrophysics. Understanding the processes that shaped their formation and evo…
The Debris of the "Last Major Merger" is Dynamically Young
Thomas Donlon, Heidi Jo Newberg, Robyn Sanderson +4
The Milky Way's (MW) inner stellar halo contains an [Fe/H]-rich component with highly eccentric orbits, often referred to as the "last major merger." Hypotheses for the origin of t…
Predicting the LISA white dwarf binary population in the Milky Way with cosmological simulations
Astrid Lamberts, Sarah Blunt, Tyson Littenberg +3
Short-period (P<1 hour) white dwarf binaries will be the most numerous sources for the space-based gravitational wave detector LISA. Based on thousands of resolved systems, we will…
Kinematic Signatures in the Stellar Halo from Cosmological Encounters between the Milky Way and its Clouds
Mia Mansfield, Robyn Sanderson, Daniel Hey +4
Recent theoretical and observational analysis of the interaction between the Milky Way (MW) and LMC suggest that it has a significant dynamical impact on the MW's stellar halo. We…
The Seventeenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: Complete Release of MaNGA, MaStar and APOGEE-2 Data
Abdurro'uf, Katherine Accetta, Conny Aerts +337
This paper documents the seventeenth data release (DR17) from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys; the fifth and final release from the fourth phase (SDSS-IV). DR17 contains the complete…
FIRE-2 Simulations: Physics versus Numerics in Galaxy Formation
Philip F Hopkins, Andrew Wetzel, Dusan Keres +25
The Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE) project explores feedback in cosmological galaxy formation simulations. Previous FIRE simulations used an identical source code (FIRE-…
Probing Atomic Dark Matter with Stellar Streams in Milky Way-Mass Galaxies
Lucas S. Mandacarú Guerra, Stephanie O'Neil, Mariangela Lisanti +7
We present the first detailed analysis of the effects of dissipative dark matter on stellar streams. As a concrete example, we generate a cosmological hydrodynamic zoom-in simulati…
Streams on FIRE: Populations of Detectable Stellar Streams in the Milky Way and FIRE
Nora Shipp, Nondh Panithanpaisal, Lina Necib +18
We present the first detailed study comparing the populations of stellar streams in cosmological simulations to observed Milky Way dwarf galaxy streams. In particular, we compare s…
The kinematics of very low mass dwarfs: splinter session summary
Adam J. Burgasser, Jacqueline K. Faherty, Sarah Schmidt +10
Kinematic investigations are being increasingly deployed in studies of the lowest mass stars and brown dwarfs to investigate their origins, characterize their atmospheres, and exam…
Revisiting the Role of M31 in the Dynamical History of the Magellanic Clouds
Nitya Kallivayalil, Gurtina Besla, Robyn Sanderson +1
We study the dynamics of the Magellanic Clouds in a model for the Local Group whose mass is constrained using the timing argument/two-body limit of the action principle. The goal i…
Discovery of the First Five Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor Stars in the LMC
Madeline Lucey, Vedant Chandra, Alexander Ji +7
A substantial fraction of metal-poor stars in the local Milky Way halo exhibit large overabundances of carbon. These stars, dubbed Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor (CEMP) stars, provide…
The Most Distant Stars in the Milky Way
John J. Bochanski, Beth Willman, Nelson Caldwell +4
We report on the discovery of the most distant Milky Way (MW) stars known to date: ULAS J001535.72015549.6 and ULAS J074417.48253233.0. These stars were selected as M giant c…
A map of the outer gas disk of the Galaxy with direct distances from young stars
Peter Craig, Sukanya Chakrabarti, Alexander R. Pettitt +2
For more than fifty years, astronomers have mapped the neutral hydrogen gas in the Galaxy assuming kinematically derived distances. We employ the distances of nearby young stars, w…
Synthetic Gaia DR3 surveys from the FIRE cosmological simulations of Milky-Way-mass galaxies
Tri Nguyen, Xiaowei Ou, Nondh Panithanpaisal +4
The third data release (DR3) of Gaia has provided a five-fold increase in the number of radial velocity measurements of stars, as well as a stark improvement in parallax and proper…
The relationship between age, metallicity, and abundances for disk stars in a simulated Milky Way galaxy
Andreia Carrillo, Melissa K. Ness, Keith Hawkins +4
Observations of the Milky Way's low- disk show that at fixed metallicity, [Fe/H], several element abundance, [X/Fe], correlate with age, with unique slopes and small scatters a…
Evidence for a Vast Prograde Stellar Stream in the Solar Vicinity
Lina Necib, Bryan Ostdiek, Mariangela Lisanti +6
Massive dwarf galaxies that merge with the Milky Way on prograde orbits can be dragged into the disk plane before being completely disrupted. Such mergers can contribute to an accr…
Cosmological predictions for minor axis stellar density profiles in the inner regions of Milky Way-mass galaxies
Madeline Lucey, Robyn Sanderson, Danny Horta +5
CDM cosmology predicts the hierarchical formation of galaxies which build up mass by merger events and accreting smaller systems. The stellar halo of the Milky Way has proven t…
Inferring Stellar Densities with Flexible Models I: The Distribution of RR Lyrae in the Milky Way with DR3
Madeline Lucey, Cecilia Mateu, Adrian Price-Whelan +3
Understanding the formation and evolutionary history of the Milky Way requires detailed mapping of its stellar components, which preserve fossil records of the Galaxy's assembly th…
The central densities of Milky Way-mass galaxies in cold and self-interacting dark matter models
Omid Sameie, Michael Boylan-Kolchin, Robyn Sanderson +6
We present a suite of baryonic cosmological zoom-in simulations of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) haloes within the ``Feedback In Realistic Environment'' (FIRE) project. The t…
In Pursuit of Galactic Archaeology: Astro2020 Science White Paper
Melissa Ness, Jonathan Bird, Jennifer Johnson +30
The next decade affords tremendous opportunity to achieve the goals of Galactic archaeology. That is, to reconstruct the evolutionary narrative of the Milky Way, based on the empir…
Shapes of Milky-Way-Mass Galaxies with Self-Interacting Dark Matter
Drona Vargya, Robyn Sanderson, Omid Sameie +4
Self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) models offer one way to reconcile inconsistencies between observations and predictions from collisionless cold dark matter (CDM) models on dwarf…
The proto-galaxy of Milky Way-mass haloes in the FIRE simulations
Danny Horta, Emily C. Cunningham, Robyn Sanderson +9
Observational studies are finding stars believed to be relics of the earliest stages of hierarchical mass assembly of the Milky Way (i.e., proto-Galaxy). In this work, we contextua…
Astro2020 APC White Paper: The Early Career Perspective on the Coming Decade, Astrophysics Career Paths, and the Decadal Survey Process
Emily Moravec, Ian Czekala, Kate Follette +53
In response to the need for the Astro2020 Decadal Survey to explicitly engage early career astronomers, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted the Ear…
Predicting the binary black hole population of the Milky Way with cosmological simulations
Astrid Lamberts, Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Philip Hopkins +7
Binary black holes are the primary endpoint of massive stellar evolution. Their properties provide a unique opportunity to constrain binary evolution, which is still poorly underst…
Galactic Mass Estimates using Dwarf Galaxies as Kinematic Tracers
Anika Slizewski, Xander Dufresne, Keslen Murdock +4
New mass estimates and cumulative mass profiles with Bayesian credible regions (c.r.) for the Milky Way (MW) are found using the Galactic Mass Estimator (GME) code and dwarf galaxy…
Star formation histories of dwarf galaxies in the FIRE simulations: dependence on mass and Local Group environment
Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Andrew Wetzel, Phillip F. Hopkins +13
We study star formation histories (SFHs) of dwarf galaxies (stellar mass ) from FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations. We compare dwarf…
Under the Firelight: Stellar Tracers of the Local Dark Matter Velocity Distribution in the Milky Way
Lina Necib, Mariangela Lisanti, Shea Garrison-Kimmel +5
The Gaia era opens new possibilities for discovering the remnants of disrupted satellite galaxies in the Solar neighborhood. If the population of local accreted stars is correlated…
The far side of the Galactic bar/bulge revealed through semi-regular variables
Daniel R. Hey, Daniel Huber, Benjamin J. Shappee +8
The Galactic bulge and bar are critical to our understanding of the Milky Way. However, due to the lack of reliable stellar distances, the structure and kinematics of the bulge/bar…
The dark side of FIRE: predicting the population of dark matter subhaloes around Milky Way-mass galaxies
Megan Barry, Andrew Wetzel, Sierra Chapman +3
A variety of observational campaigns seek to test dark-matter models by measuring dark-matter subhaloes at low masses. Despite their predicted lack of stars, these subhaloes may be…
The Galactic Center with Roman
Sean K. Terry, Matthew W. Hosek, Jessica R. Lu +31
We advocate for a Galactic center (GC) field to be added to the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey (GBTDS). The new field would yield high-cadence photometric and astrometric measur…
Shaping the Milky Way. II. The dark matter halo's response to the LMC's passage in a cosmological context
Elise Darragh-Ford, Nicolas Garavito-Camargo, Arpit Arora +15
The distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way (MW) is expected to exhibit a large-scale dynamical response to the recent infall of the LMC. This event produces a dynamical frict…
Efficient and accurate force replay in cosmological-baryonic simulations
Arpit Arora, Robyn Sanderson, Christopher Regan +8
We construct time-evolving gravitational potential models for a Milky Way-mass galaxy from the FIRE-2 suite of cosmological-baryonic simulations using basis function expansions. Th…
Self-consistent dynamical modelling of the Milky Way bar with orbital frequency analysis
Zachary Langford, Robyn Sanderson, Madeline Lucey +1
We present an update to the frequency analysis method for measuring the properties of a galactic bar. The method involves computing the fundamental frequencies of orbits in rotatin…
The Milky Way's Shell Structure Reveals the Time of a Radial Collision
Thomas Donlon, Heidi Jo Newberg, Robyn Sanderson +1
We identify shell structures in the Milky Way for the first time. We find 2 shells in the Virgo Overdensity (VOD) region and 2 shells in the Hercules Aquila Cloud (HAC) region usin…
Orientations of DM Halos in FIRE-2 Milky Way-mass Galaxies
Jay Baptista, Robyn Sanderson, Dan Huber +11
The shape and orientation of dark matter (DM) halos are sensitive to the micro-physics of the DM particle, yet in many mass models, the symmetry axes of the Milky Way's DM halo are…
Modeling Globular Cluster Stellar Streams with a Basis-Expansion N-body Code
Brian T. Cook, Kerwann Tep, Carl L. Rodriguez +6
Globular cluster stellar streams probe galaxy-formation processes and can potentially reveal the distribution of dark matter in galaxies. In many theoretical studies, streams are m…
FIRE-3: Updated Stellar Evolution Models, Yields, & Microphysics and Fitting Functions for Applications in Galaxy Simulations
Philip F. Hopkins, Andrew Wetzel, Coral Wheeler +18
Increasingly, uncertainties in predictions from galaxy formation simulations (at sub-Milky Way masses) are dominated by uncertainties in stellar evolution inputs. In this paper, we…