Detecting Triaxiality in the Galactic Dark Matter halo through Stellar Kinematics

Abstract

Assuming the dark matter halo of the Milky Way as a non-spherical potential (i.e. triaxial, prolate, oblate), we show how the assembling process of the Milky Way halo, may have left long lasting stellar halo kinematic fossils only due to the shape of the dark matter halo. In contrast with tidal streams, associated with recent satellite accretion events, these stellar kinematic groups will typically show inhomogeneous chemical and stellar population properties. However, they may be dominated by a single accretion event for certain mass assembling histories. If the detection of these peculiar kinematic stellar groups is confirmed, they would be the smoking gun for the predicted triaxiality of dark halos in cosmological galaxy formation scenarios.

9 pages, 4 figures, ApJL accepted

References in corpus (4)

• The Tully-Fisher Relation and Its Residuals for a Broadly Selected Sample of Galaxies
• The Shape of Dark Matter Haloes in the Aquarius Simulations: Evolution and Memory
• The Age of the Milky Way Inner Halo
• Stellar Kinematic Constraints on Galactic Structure Models Revisited: Bar and Spiral Arm Resonances

Cited by in corpus (6)

• The Sagittarius Stream and Halo Triaxiality
• Resonant Trapping in the Galactic Disc and Halo and its Relation with Moving Groups
• Separatrix Divergence of Stellar Streams in Galactic Potentials
• Detecting Triaxiality in the Galactic Dark Matter Halo through Stellar Kinematics II: Dependence on Dark Matter and Gravity Nature
• On Filaments, Prolate Halos and Rotation Curves
• Triaxiality Inhibitors in N-Body Simulations