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ABSTRACT We use analytical and N-body methods to study the capture of field stars by gravitating substructures moving across a galactic environment. The majority of stars captured by a substructure move on temporarily bound orbits that are lost to galactic tides after a few orbital revolutions. In numerical experiments where a substructure model is immersed into a sea of field particles on a circular orbit, we find a population of particles that remain bound to the substructure potential for indefinitely long times. This population is absent from substructure models, initially placed outside the galaxy on an eccentric orbit. We show that gravitational capture is most efficient in dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) on account of their low velocity dispersions and high stellar phase-space densities. In these galaxies, ‘dark’ sub-subhaloes, which do not experience in situ star formation, may capture field stars and become visible as stellar overdensities with unusual properties: (i) they would have a large size for their luminosity, (ii) contain stellar populations indistinguishable from the host galaxy, and (iii) exhibit dark matter (DM)-dominated mass-to-light ratios. We discuss the nature of several ‘anomalous’ stellar systems reported as star clusters in the Fornax and Eridanus II dSphs that exhibit some of these characteristics. DM sub-subhaloes with a mass function $${\rm d}N/{\rm d}M_\bullet \sim M_\bullet ^{-\alpha }$$ are expected to generate stellar systems with a luminosity function, $${\rm d}N/{\rm d}M_\star \sim M_\star ^{-\beta }$$, where $$\beta =(2\alpha +1)/3=1.6$$ for $$\alpha =1.9$$. Detecting and characterizing these objects in dSphs would provide unprecedented constraints on the particle mass and cross-section of a large range of DM particle candidates. 

Abstract A fundamental prediction of the Lambda cold dark matter cosmology is the centrally divergent cuspy density profile of dark matter haloes. Density cusps render cold dark matter haloes resilient to tides, and protect dwarf galaxies embedded in them from full tidal disruption. The hierarchical assembly history of the Milky Way may therefore give rise to a population of “microgalaxies”; i.e., heavily stripped remnants of early accreted satellites, which can reach arbitrarily low luminosity. Assuming that the progenitor systems are dark matter dominated, we use an empirical formalism for tidal stripping to predict the evolution of the luminosity, size, and velocity dispersion of such remnants, tracing their tidal evolution across multiple orders of magnitude in mass and size. The evolutionary tracks depend sensitively on the progenitor distribution of stellar binding energies. We explore three cases that likely bracket most realistic models of dwarf galaxies: one where the energy distribution of the most tightly bound stars follows that of the dark matter, and two where stars are defined by either an exponential density or surface brightness profile. The tidal evolution in the size–velocity dispersion plane is quite similar for these three models, although their remnants may differ widely in luminosity. Microgalaxies are therefore best distinguished from globular clusters by the presence of dark matter; either directly, by measuring their velocity dispersion, or indirectly, by examining their tidal resilience. Our work highlights the need for further theoretical and observational constraints on the stellar energy distribution in dwarf galaxies. 

Abstract We use a geometric method to derive (two-dimensional) separation functions among pairs of objects within populations of specified position function $\mathit{dN}/d\mathit{R}$. We present analytic solutions for separation functions corresponding to a uniform surface density within a circular field, a Plummer sphere (viewed in projection), and the mixture thereof—including contributions from binary objects within both subpopulations. These results enable inferences about binary object populations via direct modeling of object position and pair separation data, without resorting to standard estimators of the two-point correlation function. Analyzing mock data sets designed to mimic known dwarf spheroidal galaxies, we demonstrate the ability to recover input properties including the number of wide binary star systems and, in cases where the number of resolved binary pairs is assumed to be ≳a few hundred, characteristic features (e.g., steepening and/or truncation) of their separation function. Combined with forthcoming observational capabilities, this methodology opens a window onto the formation and/or survival of wide binary populations in dwarf galaxies, and offers a novel probe of inferred dark matter substructure on the smallest galactic scales. 

Abstract The total mass of the Local Group (LG) is a fundamental quantity that enables interpreting the orbits of its constituent galaxies and placing the LG in a cosmological context. One of the few methods that allows inferring the total mass directly is the “Timing Argument,” which models the relative orbit of the Milky Way (MW) and M31 in equilibrium. The MW itself is not in equilibrium, a byproduct of its merger history and including the recent pericentric passage of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and recent work has found that the MW disk is moving with a lower bound “travel velocity” of ∼32 km s⁻¹with respect to the outer stellar halo. Previous Timing Argument measurements have attempted to account for this nonequilibrium state, but have been restricted to theoretical predictions for the impact of the LMC specifically. In this paper, we quantify the impact of a travel velocity on recovered LG mass estimates using several different compilations of recent kinematic measurements of M31. We find that incorporating the measured value of the travel velocity lowers the inferred LG mass by 10%–12% compared to a static MW halo. Measurements of the travel velocity with more distant tracers could yield even larger values, which would further decrease the inferred LG mass. Therefore, the newly measured travel velocity directly implies a lower LG mass than from a model with a static MW halo and must be considered in future dynamical studies of the Local Volume.