Resonant Orbits and the High Velocity Peaks Towards the Bulge

TL;DR

This paper investigates how resonant stellar orbits in the Milky Way's bar structure create high velocity peaks observed towards the Galactic bulge, linking orbital dynamics to observed kinematic features.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract and analyze resonant orbits in a Milky Way-like N-body simulation, connecting orbit families to observed velocity peaks.

Findings

Resonant orbits, especially the 2:1 family, explain high velocity peaks.

Peak locations depend on bar angle, fitting 10-25 degrees.

Absence of peaks at higher latitudes is due to fewer bar-supporting orbits.

Abstract

We extract the resonant orbits from an N-body bar that is a good representation of the Milky Way, using the method recently introduced by Molloy et al. (2015). By decomposing the bar into its constituent orbit families, we show that they are intimately connected to the boxy-peanut shape of the density. We highlight the imprint due solely to resonant orbits on the kinematic landscape towards the Galactic centre. The resonant orbits are shown to have distinct kinematic features and may be used to explain the cold velocity peak seen in the APOGEE commissioning data (Nidever at al., 2012). We show that high velocity peaks are a natural consequence of the motions of stars in the 2:1 orbit family and that stars on other higher order resonances can contribute to the peaks. The locations of the peaks vary with bar angle and, with the tacit assumption that the observed peaks are due to the 2:1 family, we find that the locations of the high velocity peaks correspond to bar angles in the range 10 < theta_bar < 25 (deg). However, some important questions about the nature of the peaks remain, such as their apparent absence in other surveys of the Bulge and the deviations from symmetry between equivalent fields in the north and south. We show that the absence of a peak in surveys at higher latitudes is likely due to the combination of a less prominent peak and a lower number density of bar supporting orbits at these latitudes.