Journal Club

Evidence of a population of dark subhaloes from Gaia and Pan-STARRS observations of the GD-1 stream

Europe/Rome
0/0-3 - Sala Rosino (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia - Edificio ex-Rizzato)

0/0-3 - Sala Rosino

Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia - Edificio ex-Rizzato

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Description

Speakers: Edoardo Borsato (Università degli Studi di Padova)

New data from the Gaia satellite, when combined with accurate photometry from the Pan-STARRS survey, allow us to accurately estimate the properties of the GD-1 stream. Here, we analyse the stellar density variations in the GD-1 stream and show that they cannot be due to known baryonic structures such as giant molecular clouds, globular clusters, or the Milky Way’s bar or spiral arms. A joint analysis of the GD-1 and Pal 5 streams instead requires a population of dark substructures with masses ≈107–109 M. We infer a total abundance of dark subhaloes normalized to standard cold dark matter nsub/nsub,CDM=0.4+0.30.2 (68 per cent), which corresponds to a mass fraction contained in the subhaloes fsub=0.14+0.110.07 per cent, compatible with the predictions of hydrodynamical simulation of cold dark matter with baryons.