# The phase-space structure of tidally stripped halos

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method for creating stable, finite, equilibrium models of dark matter halos that resemble tidally truncated profiles, useful for simulations and theoretical analysis.

## Contribution

The authors develop a novel iterative truncation method for NFW halos, providing stable models and an analytic approximation for tidally stripped systems.

## Key findings

- Models closely match tidally truncated density profiles
- Models are highly stable for N-body simulations
- Analytic approximation accurately describes tidally stripped halos

## Abstract

We propose a new method for generating equilibrium models of spherical systems of collisionless particles that are finite in extent, but whose central regions resemble dark matter halos from cosmological simulations. This method involves iteratively removing unbound particles from a Navarro-Frenk-White profile truncated sharply at some radius. The resulting models are extremely stable, and thus provide a good starting point for N-body simulations of isolated halos. We provide a code to generate such models for NFW and a variety of other common density profiles. We then develop an analytic approximation to this truncated distribution function. Our method proceeds by analogy with the King model, truncating and shifting the original distribution function of an infinitely extended Navarro-Frenk-White profile in energy space. We show that the density profiles of our models closely resemble the tidally truncated density profiles seen previously in studies of satellite evolution. Pursuing this analogy further with a series of simulations of tidal mass loss, we find that our models provide a good approximation to the full distribution function of tidally stripped systems, thus allowing theoretically motivated phase-space calculations for such systems.