Weighing the local dark matter with RAVE red clump stars

Understand

We determine the Galactic potential in the solar neigbourhood from RAVE observations.

• We select red clump stars for which accurate distances, radial velocities, and metallicities have been measured.
• Combined with data from the 2MASS and UCAC catalogues, we build a sample of 4600 red clump stars within a cylinder of 500 pc radius oriented in the direction of the South Galactic Pole, in the range of 200 pc to 2000 pc distances.
• We deduce the vertical force and the total mass density distribution up to 2 kpc away from the Galactic plane by fitting a distribution function depending explicitly on three isolating integrals of the motion in a separable potential locally representing the Galactic one with four free parameters.