Probing the Halo From the Solar Vicinity to the Outer Galaxy: Connecting Stars in Local Velocity Structures to Large-Scale Clouds

TL;DR

This study links local velocity structures of M giant stars to large-scale stellar clouds, revealing insights into Galactic accretion events, debris morphology, and implications for dark matter distribution.

Contribution

It connects local velocity features with distant stellar clouds, advancing understanding of Galactic debris and accretion history using orbit analysis.

Findings

Local velocity structures are associated with large, cloud-like stellar debris.

Most debris resides at orbital apocenters, forming large, diffuse structures.

Connections help map Galactic debris systems and inform dark matter studies.

Abstract

(Abridged) This paper presents the first connections made between two local features in velocity-space found in a survey of M giant stars and stellar spatial inhomogeneities on global scales. Comparison to cosmological, chemodynamical stellar halo models confirm that the M giant population is particularly sensitive to rare, recent and massive accretion events. These events can give rise to local observed velocity sequences - a signature of a small fraction of debris from a common progenitor, passing at high velocity through the survey volume, near the pericenters of their eccentric orbits. The majority of the debris is found in much larger structures, whose morphologies are more cloud-like than stream-like and which lie at the orbital apocenters. Adopting this interpretation, the full-space motions represented by the observed velocity features are derived under the assumption that the members within each sequence share a common velocity. Orbit integrations are then used to trace the past and future trajectories of these stars across the sky revealing plausible associations with large, previously-discovered, cloud-like structures. The connections made between nearby velocity structures and these distant clouds represent preliminary steps towards developing coherent maps of such giant debris systems. These maps promise to provide new insights into the origin of debris clouds, new probes of Galactic history and structure, and new constraints on the high-velocity tails of the local dark matter distribution that are essential for interpreting direct detection experiments.