Detecting Thin Stellar Streams in External Galaxies: Resolved Stars & Integrated Light

Abstract

The morphology of thin stellar streams can be used to test the nature of dark matter. It is therefore crucial to extend searches for globular cluster streams to other galaxies than the Milky Way. In this paper, we investigate the current and future prospects of detecting globular cluster streams in external galaxies in resolved stars (e.g. with WFIRST) and using integrated light (e.g. with HSC, LSST and Euclid). In particular, we inject mock-streams to data from the PAndAS M31 survey, and produce simulated M31 backgrounds mimicking what WFIRST will observe in M31. Additionally, we estimate the distance limit to which globular cluster streams will be observable. Our results demonstrate that for a 1 hour (1000 sec.) exposure, using conservative estimates, WFIRST should detect globular cluster streams in resolved stars in galaxies out to distances of ~3.5 Mpc (~2 Mpc). This volume contains 199 (122) galaxies of which >90% are dwarfs. With integrated light, thin streams can be resolved out to ~100 Mpc with HSC and LSST and to ~600 Mpc with WFIRST and Euclid. The low surface brightness of the streams (typically >30 mag/arcsec${}^2$), however, will make them difficult to detect, unless the streams originate from very young clusters. We emphasize that if the external galaxies do not host spiral arms or galactic bars, gaps in their stellar streams provide an ideal test case for evidence of interactions with dark matter subhalos. Furthermore, obtaining a large samples of thin stellar streams can help constrain the orbital structure and hence the potentials of external halos.

arXiv comment22 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, submitted to AAS journals, comments welcome

References in corpus (67)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Gaia Data Release 2. Summary of the contents and survey properties
• PARSEC: stellar tracks and isochrones with the PAdova and TRieste Stellar Evolution Code
• Binary companions of evolved stars in APOGEE DR14: Search method and catalog of ~5,000 companions
• LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
• CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey - The Hubble Space Telescope Observations, Imaging Data Products and Mosaics
• Overview of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys
• A new generation of PARSEC-COLIBRI stellar isochrones including the TP-AGB phase
• WFPC2 Stellar Photometry with HSTphot
• The Field of Streams: Sagittarius and its Siblings
• Clumps and streams in the local dark matter distribution
• A giant stream of metal-rich stars in the halo of the galaxy M31
• The Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy: a Model for Evolution in a Triaxial Milky Way Halo
• Detection of massive tidal tails around the globular cluster Pal 5 with SDSS commissioning data
• Constraining the Milky Way potential with a 6-D phase-space map of the GD-1 stellar stream
• The Haunted Halos of Andromeda and Triangulum: A panorama of galaxy formation in action
• The Circular Velocity Curve of the Milky Way from $5$ to $25$ kpc
• Stellar Tidal Streams in Spiral Galaxies of the Local Volume: A Pilot Survey with Modest Aperture Telescopes
• Not so lumpy after all: modeling the depletion of dark matter subhalos by Milky Way-like galaxies
• Detection of a 63 Degree Cold Stellar Stream in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Stellar Streams Discovered in the Dark Energy Survey
• A Prescription for Building the Milky Way's Halo from Disrupted Satellites
• Galactic Halo substructure in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: the ancient tidal stream from the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy
• Uncovering CDM halo substructure with tidal streams
• Magnetically Aligned HI Fibers and the Rolling Hough Transform
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury X. Ultraviolet to Infrared Photometry of 117 Million Equidistant Stars
• How Lumpy is the Milky Way's Dark Matter Halo?
• The extended halo of Centaurus A: uncovering satellites, streams, and substructures
• HI kinematics and dynamics of Messier 31
• Tidal Streams as Probes of the Galactic Potential
• The Spur and the Gap in GD-1: Dynamical evidence for a dark substructure in the Milky Way halo
• Clumpy Streams from Clumpy Halos: Detecting Missing Satellites with Cold Stellar Structures
• Globular clusters in the outer Galactic halo: new HST/ACS imaging of 6 globular clusters and the Galactic globular cluster age-metallicity relation
• The large-scale structure of the halo of the Andromeda galaxy II. Hierarchical structure in the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey
• A New Method for Estimating Dark Matter Halo Masses using Globular Cluster Systems
• The shape of the inner Milky Way halo from observations of the Pal 5 and GD-1 stellar streams
• The Streams of the Gaping Abyss: A population of entangled stellar streams surrounding the Inner Galaxy
• The number and size of subhalo-induced gaps in stellar streams
• Dwarfs Gobbling Dwarfs: A Stellar Tidal Stream Around NGC 4449 and Hierarchical Galaxy Formation on Small Scales
• The PAndAS view of the Andromeda satellite system - II. Detailed properties of 23 M31 dwarf spheroidal galaxies
• The Hyades tidal tails revealed by Gaia DR2
• A sharper view of Pal 5's tails: Discovery of stream perturbations with a novel non-parametric technique
• Linear perturbation theory for tidal streams and the small-scale CDM power spectrum
• Off the beaten path: Gaia reveals GD-1 stars outside of the main stream
• First results from the Dragonfly Telephoto Array: the apparent lack of a stellar halo in the massive spiral galaxy M101
• STREAMFINDER I: A New Algorithm for detecting Stellar Streams
• Interpreting Debris from Satellite Disruption In External Galaxies
• Gaps in globular cluster streams: giant molecular clouds can cause them too
• The Euclid mission design
• Fourteen candidate RR Lyrae star streams in the inner Galaxy
• A tidally distorted dwarf galaxy near NGC 4449
• Tidal Stream Morphology as an Indicator of Dark Matter Halo Geometry: the Case of Palomar 5
• Effects of baryonic and dark matter substructure on the Pal 5 stream
• Chaotic Dispersal of Tidal Debris
• Feeling the pull, a study of natural Galactic accelerometers. I: photometry of the delicate stellar stream of the Palomar 5 globular cluster
• Tidal Features at 0.05<z<0.45 in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program: Properties and Formation Channels
• Shepherding Tidal Debris with the Galactic Bar: The Ophiuchus Stream
• Action-space clustering of tidal streams to infer the Galactic potential
• Tidal disruption of globular clusters in dwarf galaxies with triaxial dark matter haloes
• Old globular clusters in magellanic-type dwarf irregular galaxies
• A PAndAS view of M31 dwarf elliptical satellites: NGC147 and NGC185
• Exploring the Very Extended Low Surface Brightness Stellar Populations of the Large Magellanic Cloud with SMASH
• Feeling the pull, a study of natural Galactic accelerometers. II: kinematics and mass of the delicate stellar stream of the Palomar 5 globular cluster
• Dwarf Galaxies in the Local Volume
• Deep Optical Photometry of Six Fields in the Andromeda Galaxy
• First SDO/AIA Observation of Solar Prominence Formation Following an Eruption: Magnetic Dips and Sustained Condensation and Drainage

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Hidden depths in the local Universe: The Stellar Stream Legacy Survey
• Variations in the width, density, and direction of the Palomar 5 tidal tails
• Via Machinae: Searching for Stellar Streams using Unsupervised Machine Learning
• Streams on FIRE: Populations of Detectable Stellar Streams in the Milky Way and FIRE
• The Hough Stream Spotter: A New Method for Detecting Linear Structure in Resolved Stars and Application to the Stellar Halo of M31
• Effects of chaos on the detectability of stellar streams
• Charting Galactic Accelerations with Stellar Streams and Machine Learning
• A Tale of a Tail: A Tidally-Disrupting Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy in the M81 Group
• A giant thin stellar stream in the Coma Galaxy Cluster
• Hunting ghosts: the iconic stellar stream(s) around NG5907 under scrutiny
• Prospects for Detecting Gaps in Globular Cluster Stellar Streams in External Galaxies with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
• Evidence for the First Globular Cluster Stellar Stream beyond the Milky Way
• Constraining the population of dark matter halo shapes using hierarchical inference with extragalactic stellar streams
• No Stream Left Unscathed: The imprint of a host galaxy
• walter: A Tool for Predicting Resolved Stellar Population Observations with Applications to the Roman Space Telescope