SIMBAD references

2018ApJ...862L...1D - Astrophys. J., 862, L1-L1 (2018/July-3)

Apocenter pile-up: origin of the stellar halo density break.

DEASON A.J., BELOKUROV V., KOPOSOV S.E. and LANCASTER L.

Abstract (from CDS):

We measure the orbital properties of halo stars using seven-dimensional information provided by Gaia and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A metal-rich population of stars, present in both local main sequence stars and more distant blue horizontal branch stars, have very radial orbits (eccentricity ∼0.9) and apocenters that coincide with the stellar halo "break radius" at galactocentric distance r ∼ 20 kpc. Previous work has shown that the stellar halo density falls off much more rapidly beyond this break radius. We argue that the correspondence between the apocenters of high metallicity, high-eccentricity stars, and the broken density profile is caused by the build-up of stars at the apocenter of a common dwarf progenitor. Although the radially biased stars are likely present down to metallicities of [Fe/H] ∼ -2, the increasing dominance at higher metallicities suggests a massive dwarf progenitor, which is at least as massive as the Fornax and Sagittarius dwarf galaxies, and is likely the dominant progenitor of the inner stellar halo.

Abstract Copyright: © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Journal keyword(s): Galaxy: halo - Galaxy: kinematics and dynamics - Galaxy: structure

Simbad objects: 3

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