2012ApJ...757...87L

Through numerical simulations, we study the dissolution timescale of the Ursa Minor cold stellar clump, due to the combination of phase-mixing and gravitational encounters with compact dark substructures in the halo of Ursa Minor. We compare two scenarios: one where the dark halo is made up by a smooth mass distribution of light particles and one where the halo contains 10% of its mass in the form of substructures (subhalos). In a smooth halo, the stellar clump survives for a Hubble time provided that the dark matter halo has a large core. In contrast, when the point-mass dark substructures are added, the clump survives for barely ∼1.5 Gyr. These results suggest a strong test of the Λ-cold dark matter scenario at dwarf galaxy scale.