On the Shoulders of Giants: Properties of the Stellar Halo and the Milky Way Mass Distribution

TL;DR

This study models the Milky Way's mass distribution using stellar halo kinematics, revealing a broken density profile, a radially biased velocity anisotropy, and a relatively small halo mass, with implications for galaxy structure understanding.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive decomposition of the Milky Way into bulge, disk, and halo, and derives detailed properties of the stellar halo and dark matter distribution using multiple observational data sets.

Findings

Stellar halo density breaks at ~17 kpc and cuts off around 98 kpc.

Outer halo stars exhibit low velocity dispersion, indicating halo truncation.

Halo virial mass estimated at approximately 0.8 x 10^{12} solar masses.

Abstract

Halo stars orbit within the potential of the Milky Way and hence their kinematics can be used to understand the underlying mass distribution. However, the inferred mass distribution depends sensitively upon assumptions made on the density and the velocity anisotropy profiles of the tracers. Also, there is a degeneracy between the parameters of the halo and that of the disk or bulge. Here, we decompose the Galaxy into bulge, disk and dark matter halo and then model the kinematic data of the halo BHB and K-giants from the SEGUE. Additionally, we use the gas terminal velocity curve and the Sgr A$^*$ proper motion. With $R_\odot = 8.5$kpc, our study reveals that the density of the stellar halo has a break at $17.2^{+1.1}_{-1.0}$ kpc, and an exponential cut-off in the outer parts starting at $97.7^{+15.6}_{-15.8}$kpc. Also, we find the velocity anisotropy is radially biased with $\beta_s= 0.4\pm{0.2}$ in the outer halo. We measure halo virial mass $M_{\text{vir}} = 0.80^{+0.31}_{-0.16} \times 10^{12} M_{\odot}$, concentration $c=21.1^{+14.8}_{-8.3}$, disk mass of $0.95^{+0.24}_{-0.30}\times10^{11} M_{\odot}$, disk scale length of $4.9^{+0.4}_{-0.4}$ kpc and bulge mass of $0.91^{+0.31}_{-0.38} \times 10^{10} M_{\odot}$. The mass of halo is found to be small and this has important consequences. The giant stars reveal that the outermost halo stars have low velocity dispersion interestingly suggesting a truncation of the stellar halo density rather than a small overall mass of the Galaxy. Our estimates of local escape velocity $v_{\rm esc} = 550.9^{+32.4}_{-22.1}$ kms$^{-1}$ and dark matter density $\rho^{\rm DM}_{\odot} = 0.0088^{+0.0024}_{-0.0018} M_{\odot} {\rm pc^{-3}} $ ($0.35^{+0.08}_{-0.07}$ GeV cm$^{-3}$) are in good agreement with recent estimates. Some of the above estimates are depended on the adopted value of $R_\odot$ and of outer power-law index of the tracer number density.