The mass of the Milky Way Galaxy

Kulessa, Andy; Lynden-Bell, D.

doi:10.1093/mnras/255.1.105

Cited by 66 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Furthermore, although other studies have used a Bayesian analysis to infer the mass of the Milky Way (e.g. Little & Tremaine 1987;Kulessa & Lynden-Bell 1992;Kochanek 1996;Wilkinson & Evans 1999;McMillan 2011;Kafle et al 2012;Williams & Evans 2015;Küpper et al 2015), to our knowledge none of these studies has included measurement uncertainties using a coherent measurement model as we have done here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bayesian Mass Estimates of the Milky Way: Including Measurement Uncertainties with Hierarchical Bayes

Eadie

Springford

Harris

2017

ApJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present a hierarchical Bayesian method for estimating the total mass and mass profile of the Milky Way Galaxy. The new hierarchical Bayesian approach further improves the framework presented by Eadie et al. (2015b); Eadie & Harris (2016) and builds upon the preliminary reports by Eadie et al. (2015a,c). The method uses a distribution function f (E, L) to model the galaxy and kinematic data from satellite objects such as globular clusters (GCs) to trace the Galaxy's gravitational potential. A major advantage of the method is that it not only includes complete and incomplete data simultaneously in the analysis, but also incorporates measurement uncertainties in a coherent and meaningful way. We first test the hierarchical Bayesian framework, which includes measurement uncertainties, using the same data and power-law model assumed in Eadie & Harris (2016), and find the results are similar but more strongly constrained. Next, we take advantage of the new statistical framework and incorporate all possible GC data, finding a cumulative mass profile with Bayesian credible regions. This profile implies a mass within 125kpc of 4.8 × 1011 M with a 95% Bayesian credible region of (4.0 − 5.8) × 10 11 M . Our results also provide estimates of the true specific energies of all the GCs. By comparing these estimated energies to the measured energies of GCs with complete velocity measurements, we observe that (the few) remote tracers with complete measurements may play a large role in determining a total mass estimate of the Galaxy. Thus, our study stresses the need for more remote tracers with complete velocity measurements.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bayesian Mass Estimates of the Milky Way: Including Measurement Uncertainties with Hierarchical Bayes

Eadie

Springford

Harris

2017

ApJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Many authors have improved upon this analysis using both better theoretical models and observational samples (Little and Tremaine, 1987;Zaritsky et al, 1989;Kulessa and Lynden-Bell, 1992;Kochanek, 1996;Wilkinson and Evans, 1999;Sakamoto et al, 2003;Watkins et al, 2010). More recently, thanks to large scale surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), it has become possible to measure the dark matter halo mass profile using the kinematics of a large sample of Blue Horizontal Branch (BHB) stars (Xue et al, 2008;Deason et al, 2012).…”

Section: The Mass Of the Milky Waymentioning

confidence: 99%

Galactic searches for dark matter

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For nearly a century, more mass has been measured in galaxies than is contained in the luminous stars and gas. Through continual advances in observations and theory, it has become clear that the dark matter in galaxies is not comprised of known astronomical objects or baryonic matter, and that identification of it is certain to reveal a profound connection between astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics. The best explanation for dark matter is that it is in the form of a yet undiscovered particle of nature, with experiments now gaining sensitivity to the most well-motivated particle dark matter candidates. In this article, I review measurements of dark matter in the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies and the status of Galactic searches for particle dark matter using a combination of terrestrial and space-based astroparticle detectors, and large scale astronomical surveys. I review the limits on the dark matter annihilation and scattering cross sections that can be extracted from both astroparticle experiments and astronomical observations, and explore the theoretical implications of these limits. I discuss methods to measure the properties of particle dark matter using future experiments, and conclude by highlighting the exciting potential for dark matter searches during the next decade, and beyond.

show abstract

“…We know that eventually this must be matched to a Robertson-Walker metric describing the universe or alternative we might use the asymptotically flat idealization for regions very far from the galaxy in question. To do so we must consider (29) as describing the spacetime geometry for r < R 0 and the Schwarzschild metric for r > R 0 , where R 0 is the radius where the flat rotation curves end. The advantage of this approximation is that far from the galaxy the spacetime is Minkowskian a fact that facilitates, for example, the analysis of the propagation of light signals.…”

Section: Gravitational Field In the Dark Matter Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

Alternative approach to the galactic dark matter problem

2001

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We discuss scenarios in which the galactic dark matter in spiral galaxies is described by a long range coherent field which settles in a stationary configuration that might account for the features of the galactic rotation curves. The simplest possibility is to consider scalar fields, so we discuss in particular, two mechanisms that would account for the settlement of the scalar field in a non-trivial configuration in the absence of a direct coupling of the field with ordinary matter: topological defects, and spontaneous scalarization.

show abstract

The mass of the Milky Way Galaxy

Cited by 66 publications

References 0 publications

Bayesian Mass Estimates of the Milky Way: Including Measurement Uncertainties with Hierarchical Bayes

Bayesian Mass Estimates of the Milky Way: Including Measurement Uncertainties with Hierarchical Bayes

Galactic searches for dark matter

Alternative approach to the galactic dark matter problem

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About