What to expect when using globular clusters as tracers of the total mass distribution in Milky Way-mass galaxies

TL;DR

This study evaluates how well globular clusters can be used as tracers in dynamical models to determine the dark matter distribution in Milky Way-like galaxies, emphasizing the importance of having at least 150 GCs for reliable results.

Contribution

It demonstrates that Jeans-Anisotropic-MGE models can effectively recover dark matter halo properties using GCs, highlighting the critical role of the number of GCs in the accuracy of the models.

Findings

DM halo properties are reasonably well recovered by JAM models.

The accuracy of the models improves exponentially with the number of GCs.

At least 150 GCs are needed for reliable mass and distribution estimates.

Abstract

Dynamical models allow us to connect the motion of a set of tracers to the underlying gravitational potential, and thus to the total (luminous and dark) matter distribution. They are particularly useful for understanding the mass and spatial distribution of dark matter (DM) in a galaxy. Globular clusters (GCs) are an ideal tracer population in dynamical models, since they are bright and can be found far out into the halo of galaxies. We aim to test how well Jeans-Anisotropic-MGE (JAM) models using GCs (positions and line-of-sight velocities) as tracers can constrain the mass and radial distribution of DM halos. For this, we use the E-MOSAICS suite of 25 zoom-in simulations of L* galaxies. We find that the DM halo properties are reasonably well recovered by the JAM models. There is, however, a strong correlation between how well we recover the mass and the radial distribution of the DM and the number of GCs in the galaxy: the constraints get exponentially worse with fewer GCs, and at least 150 GCs are needed in order to guarantee that the JAM model will perform well. We find that while the data quality (uncertainty on the radial velocities) can be important, the number of GCs is the dominant factor in terms of the accuracy and precision of the measurements. This work shows promising results for these models to be used in extragalactic systems with a sample of more than 150 GCs.