Probability of forming gaps in the GD-1 stream by close encounters of globular clusters

Understand

One of the most intriguing properties of the GD-1 stellar stream is the existence of three gaps.

• If these gaps were formed by close encounters with dark matter subhalos, the GD-1 stream opens an exciting window through which we can see the size, mass, and velocity distributions of the dark matter subhalos in the Milky Way.
• However, in order to use the GD-1 stream as a probe of the dark matter substructure, we need to disprove that these gaps are not due to the perturbations from baryonic components of the Milky Way.
• Here we ran a large number of test particle simulations to investigate the probability that each of the known globular clusters (GCs) can form a GD-1-like gap, by using the kinematical data of the GD-1 stream and GCs from Gaia EDR3 and by fully taking into account the observational uncertainty.