Tidal ribbons

Abstract

Tidal debris from Galactic satellites generally forms one-dimensional elongated streams, since nearby Galactic orbits have almost identical frequency ratios. We show that the situation is different for orbits close to the Galactic disc, whose vertical frequency ${\Omega }_z$ is strongly amplitude dependent. As a consequence, stars stripped from a satellite obtain a range of values for ${\Omega }_z$ and hence of frequency ratios, and spread into two dimensions, forming a ribbon-like structure with vertical extent comparable to that of the progenitor orbit. In integrals-of-motion space, tidal ribbons are clumps, which offers the best chance of detection and allows the determination of the Galactic potential vertically across the disc.

7 pages, 6 figures, accepted for MNRAS

References in corpus (7)

• galpy: A Python Library for Galactic Dynamics
• The shape of the inner Milky Way halo from observations of the Pal 5 and GD-1 stellar streams
• A box full of chocolates: The rich structure of the nearby stellar halo revealed by Gaia and RAVE
• The mechanics of tidal streams
• Dipping Our Toes in the Water: First Models of GD-1 as a Stream
• Hamiltonians of Spherically Symmetric, Scale-Free Galaxies in Action-Angle Coordinates
• On the dynamics of tidal streams in the Milky Way galaxy

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• A Case Study of Interstellar Material Delivery: α Centauri