Reply to Comment on "A slightly oblate dark matter halo revealed by a retrograde precessing Galactic disk warp"

TL;DR

This paper defends a recent measurement of the Galactic disk warp precession, demonstrating through simulations and analysis that the method and results are robust despite concerns about potential biases.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive validation of the 'motion-picture' method for measuring disk warp precession, confirming the robustness of previous findings.

Findings

The impact of ignoring disk warp twist is minor.

The 'motion-picture' method accurately measures precession in young stellar populations.

Previous conclusions about the dark matter halo shape remain valid.

Abstract

In this reply, we present a comprehensive analysis addressing the concerns raised by Dehnen et al. (2024) regarding our recent measurement of the disk warp precession using the `motion-picture' method (Huang et al. 2024). We carefully examine the impact of ignoring the twist of the disk warp and the so-called $R$-$\tau$ correlation on the estimation of the precession rate. The results indicate that the effect is minor and does not exceed the systematic and statistical uncertainties. Using N-body+SPH simulation data, we confirm that the `motion-picture' technique is effective in measuring retrograde precession of disk warp in stellar populations younger than 170 Myr, similar to classical Cepheids. Therefore, the overall conclusions of Huang et al. (2024) remain robust.