Mapping the anisotropic Galactic stellar halo with Blue Horizontal Branch stars

TL;DR

This study maps the anisotropic Galactic stellar halo using Blue Horizontal Branch stars, revealing complex density profiles and a detailed 3D structure of the Pisces overdensity, challenging previous interpretations of halo responses.

Contribution

It introduces a probabilistic method to identify BHB stars across multiple sky directions and provides a detailed 3D density map of the stellar halo, highlighting its anisotropic nature.

Findings

The radial density profile follows a double power law with a break at ~20 kpc.

The stellar halo shows high anisotropy with varying density slopes.

No significant collective response signature was found in the Pisces overdensity.

Abstract

We use Legacy Survey photometric data to probe the stellar halo in multiple directions of the sky using a probabilistic methodology to identify Blue Horizontal Branch (BHB) stars. The measured average radial density profile follows a double power law in the range $ 5 < r_{gc}/{\rm kpc} < 120$, with a density break at $r_{gc}\approx20$ kpc. This description, however, falls short, depending on the chosen line-of-sight, with some regions showing no signature of a break in the profile and a wide range of density slopes, e.g. outer slope $-5.5 \lesssim \alpha_{out} \lesssim -4$, pointing towards a highly anisotropic stellar halo. This explains in part the wide range of density profiles reported in the literature owing to different tracers and sky coverage. Using our detailed 3-D stellar halo density map, we quantify the shape of the Pisces overdensity associated with the transient wake response of the Galaxy's (dark) halo to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Measured in the LMC's coordinate system, Pisces stands above the background, is 60 degrees long and 25 degrees wide and aligned with the LMC's orbit. This would correspond to a wake width of $\sim 32$ kpc at $\sim 70$ kpc. We do not find a statistically significant signature of the collective response in density as previously reported in the literature measured with K giant stars, despite our larger numbers. We release the catalogue constructed in this study with 95,446 possible BHB stars and their BHB probability.