The twisted dark matter halo of the Milky Way

Understand

We analyse systems analogous to the Milky Way (MW) in the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamics simulation in order to deduce the likely structure of the MW's dark matter halo.

• We identify MW-mass haloes in the simulation whose satellite galaxies have similar kinematics and spatial distribution to those of the bright satellites of the MW, specifically systems in which the majority of the satellites (8 out of 11) have nearly co-planar orbits that are also perpendicular to the central stellar disc.
• We find that the normal to the common orbital plane of the co-planar satellites is well aligned with the minor axis of the host dark matter halo, with a median misalignment angle of only $17.3^\circ$.
• Based on this result, we infer that the minor axis of the Galactic dark matter halo points towards $(l,b)=(182^\circ,-2^\circ)$, with an angular uncertainty at the 68 and 95 percentile confidence levels of 22$^\circ$ and 43$^\circ$ respectively.