Dipping Our Toes in the Water: First Models of GD-1 as a Stream

Understand

We present a model for producing tidal streams from disrupting progenitors in arbitrary potentials, utilizing the idea that the majority of stars escape from the progenitor's two Lagrange points.

• The method involves releasing test particles at the Lagrange points as the satellite orbits the host and dynamically evolving them in the potential of both host and progenitor.
• The method is sufficiently fast to allow large-dimensional parameter exploration using Monte Carlo methods.
• We provide the first direct modelling of 6-D stream observations -- assuming a stream rather than an orbit -- by applying our methods to GD-1.