Chaotic Dispersal of Tidal Debris

Understand

Several long, dynamically cold stellar streams have been observed around the Milky Way Galaxy, presumably formed from the tidal disruption of globular clusters.

• In integrable potentials---where all orbits are regular---tidal debris phase-mixes close to the orbit of the progenitor system.
• However, the Milky Way's dark matter halo is expected not to be fully integrable; an appreciable fraction of orbits will be chaotic.
• This paper examines the influence of chaos on the phase-space morphology of cold tidal streams.