Dynamical Properties of Collisionless Star Streams

Understand

A sufficiently extended satellite in the tidal field of a host galaxy loses mass to create nearly symmetric leading and trailing tidal streams.

• We study the case in which tidal heating drives mass loss from a low mass satellite.
• The stream effectively has two dynamical components, a common angular momentum core superposed with episodic pulses with a broader angular momentum distribution.
• The pulses appear as spurs on the stream, oscillating above and below the stream centerline, stretching and blurring in configuration space as they move away from the cluster.