Quantifying the Stellar Halo's Response to the LMC's Infall with Spherical Harmonics

Understand

The vast majority of the mass in the Milky Way (MW) is in dark matter (DM); we therefore cannot directly observe the MW mass distribution, and have to use tracer populations in order to infer properties of the MW DM halo.

• However, MW halo tracers do not only feel the gravitational influence of the MW itself.
• Tracers can also be affected by MW satellites; Garavito-Camargo et al.
• (2019) (hereafter GC19) demonstrate that the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) induces a density wake in the MW DM, resulting in large scale kinematic patterns in the MW stellar halo.