Mapping Dark Matter with Extragalactic Stellar Streams: the Case of Centaurus A

TL;DR

This study models stellar streams around Centaurus A to explore dark matter properties, revealing that radial velocity data are essential to break model degeneracies and accurately estimate the galaxy's halo mass.

Contribution

Developed a novel stream-fitting technique for external galaxies and demonstrated the importance of radial velocities in constraining dark matter halo models.

Findings

Multiple viable models fit the stream data with halo mass > 4.70×10^{12} M⊙.

Stream morphology alone cannot uniquely determine the halo mass or distribution.

Radial velocity measurements significantly improve constraints on dark matter properties.

Abstract

In the coming decade, thousands of stellar streams will be observed in the halos of external galaxies. What fundamental discoveries will we make about dark matter from these streams? As a first attempt to look at these questions, we model Magellan/Megacam imaging of the Centaurus A's (Cen A) disrupting dwarf companion Dwarf 3 (Dw3) and its associated stellar stream, to find out what can be learned about the Cen A dark-matter halo. We develop a novel external galaxy stream-fitting technique and generate model stellar streams that reproduce the stream morphology visible in the imaging. We find that there are many viable stream models that fit the data well, with reasonable parameters, provided that Cen A has a halo mass larger than M$_{200}$ $>4.70\times 10^{12}$ M$_{\odot}$. There is a second stream in Cen A's halo that is also reproduced within the context of this same dynamical model. However, stream morphology in the imaging alone does not uniquely determine the mass or mass distribution for the Cen A halo. In particular, the stream models with high likelihood show covariances between the inferred Cen A mass distribution, the inferred Dw3 progenitor mass, the Dw3 velocity, and the Dw3 line-of-sight position. We show that these degeneracies can be broken with radial-velocity measurements along the stream, and that a single radial velocity measurement puts a substantial lower limit on the halo mass. These results suggest that targeted radial-velocity measurements will be critical if we want to learn about dark matter from extragalactic stellar streams.