Clumpy Streams from Clumpy Halos: Detecting Missing Satellites with Cold Stellar Structures

TL;DR

Cold stellar streams in the Milky Way can reveal the presence of dark matter subhalos, with observable density fluctuations indicating interactions with missing satellites as predicted by LCDM cosmology.

Contribution

This study demonstrates that long cold stellar streams are sensitive probes for detecting dark matter subhalos through induced density fluctuations.

Findings

Density fluctuations in streams match predictions of missing satellite impacts.

Pal 5 stream shows surface density inhomogeneities consistent with subhalo interactions.

Results support the existence of numerous dark matter subhalos as per LCDM models.

Abstract

Dynamically cold stellar streams are ideal probes of the gravitational field of the Milky Way. This paper re-examines the question of how such streams might be used to test for the presence of "missing satellites" -the many thousands of dark-matter subhalos with masses 10^5-10^7Msolar which are seen to orbit within Galactic-scale dark-matter halos in simulations of structure formation in LCDM cosmologies. Analytical estimates of the frequency and energy scales of stream encounters indicate that these missing satellites should have a negligible effect on hot debris structures, such as the tails from the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. However, long cold streams, such as the structure known as GD-1 or those from the globular cluster Palomar 5 (Pal 5) are expected to suffer many tens of direct impacts from missing satellites during their lifetimes. Numerical experiments confirm that these impacts create gaps in the debris' orbital energy distribution, which will evolve into degree- and sub-degree- scale fluctuations in surface density over the age of the debris. Maps of Pal 5's own stream contain surface density fluctuations on these scales. The presence and frequency of these inhomogeneities suggests the existence of a population of missing satellites in numbers predicted in the standard LCDM cosmologies.