The Milky Way's rotation curve out to 100 kpc and its constraint on the Galactic mass distribution

Abstract

The rotation curve (RC) of the Milky Way out to $\sim$ 100 kpc has been constructed using $\sim$ 16,000 primary red clump giants (PRCGs) in the outer disk selected from the LSS-GAC and the SDSS-III/APOGEE survey, combined with $\sim$ 5700 halo K giants (HKGs) selected from the SDSS/SEGUE survey. To derive the RC, the PRCG sample of the warm disc population and the HKG sample of halo stellar population are respectively analyzed using a kinematical model allowing for the asymmetric drift corrections and re-analyzed using the spherical Jeans equation along with measurements of the anisotropic parameter ${\hat{I}}^2$ currently available. The typical uncertainties of RC derived from the PRCG and HKG samples are respectively 5-7 km/s and several tens km/s. We determine a circular velocity at the solar position, $V_c(R_0)$ = 240 $\pm$ 6 km/s and an azimuthal peculiar speed of the Sun, $V_{\odot }$ = 12.1 $\pm$ 7.6 km/s, both in good agreement with the previous determinations. The newly constructed RC has a generally flat value of 240 km/s within a Galactocentric distance $r$ of 25 kpc and then decreases steadily to 150 km/s at $r$ $\sim$ 100 kpc. On top of this overall trend, the RC exhibits two prominent localized dips, one at $r$ $\sim$ 11 kpc and another at $r$ $\sim$ 19 kpc. From the newly constructed RC, combined with other constraints, we have built a parametrized mass model for the Galaxy, yielding a virial mass of the Milky Way's dark matter halo of $0.90_{-0.08}^{+0.07}\times 10^{12}$ ${\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ and a local dark matter density, $\ddot{I}{}_{\odot ,\mathrm{dm}}=0.32_{-0.02}^{+0.02}$ GeV cm${}^{-3}$.

MNRAS accepted, 18 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables