paper

The Global Dynamical Atlas of the Milky Way mergers: Constraints from Gaia EDR3 based orbits of globular clusters, stellar streams and satellite galaxies

arXiv:2202.07660 · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac4d2a

Abstract

The Milky Way halo was predominantly formed by the merging of numerous progenitor galaxies. However, our knowledge of this process is still incomplete, especially in regard to the total number of mergers, their global dynamical properties and their contribution to the stellar population of the Galactic halo. Here, we uncover the Milky Way mergers by detecting groupings of globular clusters, stellar streams and satellite galaxies in action () space. While actions fully characterize the orbits, we additionally use the redundant information on their energy () to enhance the contrast between groupings. For this endeavour, we use EDR3 based measurements of globular clusters, streams and satellites to derive their and . To detect groups, we use the software, coupled with a statistical procedure that accounts for the observed phase-space uncertainties of these objects. We detect a total of groups, including the previously known mergers , , , , and one new merger that we call . All of these mergers, together, comprise objects ( of our sample). We discuss their members, orbital properties and metallicity distributions. We find that the three most metal-poor streams of our Galaxy -- "C-19" ([Fe/H] dex), "Sylgr" ([Fe/H] dex) and "Phoenix" ([Fe/H] dex) -- are associated with ; showing it to be the most metal-poor merger. The global dynamical atlas of Milky Way mergers that we present here provides a present-day reference for galaxy formation models.

arXiv commentPublished in ApJ. Key results in Table 3. The paper contains 38 pages, 17 figures, 4 Tables

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