Found 14 talks width keyword Galactic halo

At present, our understanding of the formation history of the MW is limited due to the complexity of observing the imprints of accretion events and of reproducing them in numerical simulations. Moreover, though being the only galaxy, in which the Galactic potential can be probed in detail, the distribution of mass in the MW, and hence of the dark matter, is poorly constraint, especially at large distances. In addition, the MW is not isolated, and it has recently been suggested that the infall of the LMC can induce a perturbation in the stellar and dark matter distribution of the MW. As a consequence, the details of the formation history of our Galaxy are still unknown, such as the number of accretion events, the mass of the accreted galaxies, and the epoch of these events. Yet this information is crucial to understand our environment and to constrain the theoretical models and simulations that try to reproduce it.

One of the major challenges of the field is that a tremendous number of multi-aspect (astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic) observations at significant depth is required to study the morphology, the kinematics and the chemistry of the outskirts of our Galaxy, where are located the signatures of these events. Hopefully, the advent of recent and incoming complementary large surveys, such as the European Gaia mission, UNIONS (Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey), Pristine, Pan-STARRS (PS), WEAVE or LSST (Legacy Survey of Space and Time), is offering a new global point of view on our Galaxy’s halo, allowing us to precisely probe the Galactic potential our the MW, and to retrace itsaccretion history.

In this talk I will present recent works that have been conducted to better catarerized our Galaxy and its history with some of the existing surveys mentioned above. In addition, I will present the major improvement that will bring this new generation of large, multi-aspect surveys, to study both our Galactic history, as well as the fundamental nature of the dark matter.

Bosonic ultra-light dark matter (ULDM) in the mass range m ~ $10^{-22} - 10^{-21} \rm eV$ has been invoked as a motivated candidate with new input for the small-scale `puzzles' of cold dark matter. Numerical simulations show that these models form cored density distributions at the center of galaxies ('solitons'). These works also found an empirical scaling relation between the mass of the large-scale host halo and the mass of the central soliton. We show that this relation predicts that the peak circular velocity of the outskirts of the galaxy should approximately repeat itself in the central region. Contrasting this prediction to the measured rotation curves of well-resolved near-by galaxies, we show that ULDM in the mass range m ~ $10^{-22} - 10^{-21} \rm eV$ is in tension with the data.

Based on observations with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), I will present accurate relative ages for a sample of 64 Galactic globular clusters. This Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Treasury program has been designed to provide a new large, deep and homogeneous photometric database. Relative ages have been obtained using a main sequence fitting procedure between clusters in the sample. Relative ages are determined with an accuracy from 2% to 7%. It has been proved that derived ages are independent of the assumed theoretical models. The existence of two well defined Galactic globular cluster groups is found. A group of old globular clusters with an age dispersion of 6% and showing no age-metallicity relation, and, on the other hand, a younger group showing a clear age-metallicity relation similar to that found in the globular clusters associated to the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Roughly 1/3 of the clusters belong to the younger group. Considering these new results, it is very tempting to suggest a Milky Way's halo formation scenario in which two differentiated phases took place. A very fast collapse, where the old and coeval globular clusters where formed, followed by accretions of Milky Way's satellite galaxies.