TY - JOUR
T1 - Streams on FIRE: Populations of Detectable Stellar Streams in the Milky Way and FIRE
AU - Shipp, Nora
AU - Panithanpaisal, Nondh
AU - Necib, Lina
AU - Sanderson, Robyn
AU - Erkal, Denis
AU - Li, Ting S.
AU - Santistevan, Isaiah B.
AU - Wetzel, Andrew
AU - Cullinane, Lara R.
AU - Ji, Alexander P.
AU - Koposov, Sergey E.
AU - Kuehn, Kyler
AU - Lewis, Geraint F.
AU - Pace, Andrew B.
AU - Zucker, Daniel B.
AU - Bland-Hawthorn, Joss
AU - Cunningham, Emily C.
AU - Kim, Stacy Y.
AU - Lilleengen, Sophia
AU - Moreno, Jorge
AU - Sharma, Sanjib
N1 - 24 pages, 13 figures, 3 tables, submitted to ApJ
Funding Information:
This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by the National Science Foundation grant No. ACI-1548562. This work used the Stampede-2 allocation number PHY210118 to analyze the simulations. We generated the FIRE simulations using the following: XSEDE, supported by NSF grant No. ACI-1548562; Blue Waters, supported by the NSF; Frontera allocations AST21010 and AST20016, supported by the NSF and TACC; and Pleiades, via the NASA HEC program through the NAS Division at Ames Research Center.
Funding Information:
N.P. and R.E.S. gratefully acknowledge support from NASA grant No. 19-ATP19-0068. R.E.S. additionally acknowledges support from the Research Corporation through the Scialog Fellows program on Time Domain Astronomy, from NSF grant No. AST-2007232, and from grant No. HST-AR-15809 from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by AURA, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. I.B.S. received support from NASA, through FINESST grant No. 80NSSC21K1845. A.W. received support from the NSF via CAREER award AST-2045928 and grant No. AST-2107772, NASA ATP grant No. 80NSSC20K0513, and HST grant Nos. AR-15809, GO-15902, and GO-16273 from STScI. T.S.L. acknowledges financial support from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through grant No. RGPIN-2022-04794.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2023/5/25
Y1 - 2023/5/25
N2 - We present the first detailed comparison of populations of dwarf galaxy stellar streams in cosmological simulations and the Milky Way. In particular, we compare streams identified around 13 Milky Way analogs in the FIRE-2 simulations to streams observed by the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S
5). For an accurate comparison, we produce mock Dark Energy Survey (DES) observations of the FIRE streams and estimate the detectability of their tidal tails and progenitors. The number and stellar mass distributions of detectable stellar streams is consistent between observations and simulations. However, there are discrepancies in the distributions of pericenters and apocenters, with the detectable FIRE streams, on average, forming at larger pericenters (out to >110 kpc) and surviving only at larger apocenters (≳40 kpc) than those observed in the Milky Way. We find that the population of high-stellar-mass dwarf galaxy streams in the Milky Way is incomplete. Interestingly, a large fraction of the FIRE streams would only be detected as intact satellites in DES-like observations, since their tidal tails have too low surface brightness to be detectable. We thus predict a population of yet-undetected tidal tails around Milky Way satellites, as well as a population of fully undetected low-surface-brightness stellar streams, and estimate their detectability with the Rubin Observatory. Finally, we discuss the causes and implications of the discrepancies between the stream populations in FIRE and the Milky Way, and explore future avenues for tests of satellite disruption in cosmological simulations.
AB - We present the first detailed comparison of populations of dwarf galaxy stellar streams in cosmological simulations and the Milky Way. In particular, we compare streams identified around 13 Milky Way analogs in the FIRE-2 simulations to streams observed by the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S
5). For an accurate comparison, we produce mock Dark Energy Survey (DES) observations of the FIRE streams and estimate the detectability of their tidal tails and progenitors. The number and stellar mass distributions of detectable stellar streams is consistent between observations and simulations. However, there are discrepancies in the distributions of pericenters and apocenters, with the detectable FIRE streams, on average, forming at larger pericenters (out to >110 kpc) and surviving only at larger apocenters (≳40 kpc) than those observed in the Milky Way. We find that the population of high-stellar-mass dwarf galaxy streams in the Milky Way is incomplete. Interestingly, a large fraction of the FIRE streams would only be detected as intact satellites in DES-like observations, since their tidal tails have too low surface brightness to be detectable. We thus predict a population of yet-undetected tidal tails around Milky Way satellites, as well as a population of fully undetected low-surface-brightness stellar streams, and estimate their detectability with the Rubin Observatory. Finally, we discuss the causes and implications of the discrepancies between the stream populations in FIRE and the Milky Way, and explore future avenues for tests of satellite disruption in cosmological simulations.
KW - astro-ph.GA
U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/acc582
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/acc582
M3 - Article
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 949
SP - 1
EP - 19
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 44
ER -