Jeans analysis of the Galactic thick disk and the local dark matter density

Abstract

Dynamical estimates of the mass surface density at the solar radius can be made up to a height of 4 kpc using thick disk stars as tracers of the potential. We investigate why different Jeans estimators of the local surface density lead to puzzling and conflicting results. Using the Jeans equations, we compute the vertical (F_z) and radial (F_R) components of the gravitational force, as well as Gamma(z), defined as the radial derivative of V_c^2, with V_c^{2}= -RF_R. If we assume that the thick disk does not flare and that all the components of the velocity dispersion tensor of the thick disk have a uniform radial scalelength of 3.5 kpc, Gamma takes implausibly large negative values, when using the currently available kinematical data of the thick disk. This implies that the input parameters or the model assumptions must be revised. We have explored, using a simulated thick disk, the impact of the assumption that the scale lengths of the density and velocity dispersions do not depend on the vertical height z above the midplane. In the lack of any information about how these scale radii depend on z, we define a different strategy. By using a parameterized Galactic potential, we find that acceptable fits to F_z, F_R and Gamma are obtained for a flaring thick disk and a spherical dark matter halo with a local density larger than 0.0064 M_sun pc^{-3}. Disk-like dark matter distributions might be also compatible with the current data of the thick disk. A precise measurement of Gamma at the midplane could be very useful to discriminate between models.

21 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

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