Rotation of the Milky Way and the formation of the Magellanic Stream

TL;DR

This study investigates how variations in the Milky Way's rotation speed affect the formation of the Magellanic Stream, demonstrating that tidal interactions and recent proper motion data can reproduce observed features across a range of galaxy mass estimates.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive exploration of the parameter space for the Milky Way-LMC-SMC interaction, confirming the tidal origin of the Magellanic Stream with updated galactic parameters.

Findings

Successful models exist for a wide range of Milky Way masses.

Two close encounters between LMC and SMC occurred within the last 4 Gyr.

The Magellanic Stream's formation is consistent with recent proper motion data.

Abstract

We studied the impact of the revisited values for the LSR circular velocity of the Milky Way (Reid et al. 2004) on the formation of the Magellanic Stream. The LSR circular velocity was varied within its observational uncertainties as a free parameter of the interaction between the Large (LMC) and the Small (SMC) Magellanic Clouds and the Galaxy. We have shown that the large-scale morphology and kinematics of the Magellanic Stream may be reproduced as tidal features, assuming the recent values of the proper motions of the Magellanic Clouds (Kallivayalil et al. 2006). Automated exploration of the entire parameter space for the interaction was performed to identify all parameter combinations that allow for modeling the Magellanic Stream. Satisfactory models exist for the dynamical mass of the Milky Way within a wide range of 0.6*10^12Msun to 3.0*10^12Msun and over the entire 1-sigma errors of the proper motions of the Clouds. However, the successful models share a common interaction scenario. The Magellanic Clouds are satellites of the Milky Way, and in all cases two close LMC-SMC encounters occurred within the last 4Gyr at t<-2.5Gyr and t approx. -150Myr, triggering the formation of the Stream and of the Magellanic Bridge, respectively. The latter encounter is encoded in the observed proper motions and inevitable in any model of the interaction. We conclude that the tidal origin of the Magellanic Stream implies the previously introduced LMC/SMC orbital history, unless the parameters of the interaction are revised substantially.