Tidal disruption of globular clusters in dwarf galaxies with triaxial dark matter haloes

Understand

We use N-body simulations to study the tidal evolution of globular clusters (GCs) in dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies.

• Our models adopt a cosmologically motivated scenario in which the dSph is approximated by a static NFW halo with a triaxial shape.
• We apply our models to five GCs spanning three orders of magnitude in stellar density and two in mass, chosen to represent the properties exhibited by the five GCs of the Fornax dSph.
• We show that only the object representing Fornax's least dense GC (F1) can be fully disrupted by Fornax's internal tidal field--the four denser clusters survive even if their orbits decay to the centre of Fornax.