Tidal Streams in the Local Group and Beyond ― Observations and Implications

This volume is written by leading scientists in the field, who review the current state of our knowledge of tidal streams in the Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy, and in other nearby galaxies. The cosmological origins of dwarf galaxies and the physical processes by which they are tidally disrupted into streams and incorporated into galaxy halos are discussed. The techniques that have been used to identify tidal streams are presented and will be useful to researchers who would like to find substructures in the next generation of optical sky surveys, including Pan-STARRS and LSST. The methods that are currently under development to constrain both large scale distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way and the (small scale) lumpiness of the dark matter distribution are also explained. The authors also provide motivation for future spectroscopic surveys of Milky Way halo stars, which will aid both in the identification of tidal streams and the constraint of dark matter properties. This volume is aimed at graduate students who are beginning this field of research, but is also a resource for researchers who study tidal streams and related fields. In addition to presenting the physical processes by which tidal streams are created, it also reviews the current state of the observations and the progress towards utilizing these observations to constrain the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way. The book will introduce anyone with a background in astrophysics to the field of tidal streams.

Heidi Newberg is professor of astronomy at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She did her Ph.D. with the Berkeley Automated Supernova Search, which measured the supernova rates as a function of supernova type in Virgo-distance galaxies; and the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP), which is measured the cosmological parameters Omega and Lambda using the light curves of distant supernovae. She shared the Gruber Cosmology Prize for her work with SCP. Newberg’s current research is primarily related to understanding the structure and evolution of our own galaxy through using stars as tracers of the Galactic halo and disks. She helped to build the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which imaged ~10,000 square degrees of the sky in five optical filters and obtained over a million spectra of galaxies.

Jeffrey Carlin is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is working with Heidi J. Newberg in support of the Chinese LAMOST spectroscopic survey as part of the Participants in LAMOST, US (PLUS) collaboration. His research has focused on dwarf galaxies and their remnant stellar tidal streams in the Milky Way system.