We present the results of a kinematic study of planetary nebulae in the extreme outskirts of two spiral galaxies, M83 (NGC 5236) and M94 (NGC 4736). We find that in the inner regions of the galaxies, the vertical velocity dispersion (sigma_z) falls off exponentially with the light, as expected for a constant mass-to-light ratio, constant thickness disk. However, starting at four optical scale lengths, sigma_z asymptotes out at roughly 20 km/s. Our analysis finds evidence for significant flaring in the outer regions as well, especially in M94. These observations are in excellent agreement with predictions derived from models of disk heating by halo substructure, and demonstrate how kinematic surveys in the outer disks of spirals can be used to test hierarchical models of galaxy formation.
Tidal debris from infalling satellites can leave observable structure in the phase-space distribution of the Galactic halo. Such substructure can be manifest in the spatial and/or velocity distributions of the stars in the halo. This paper focuses on a class of substructure that is purely kinematic in nature, with no accompanying spatial features. To study its properties, we use a simulated stellar halo created by dynamically populating the Via Lactea II high-resolution N-body simulation with stars. A significant fraction of the stars in the inner halo of Via Lactea share a common speed and me…
We study the spiral arm influence on the solar neighbourhood stellar kinematics. As the nature of the Milky Way (MW) spiral arms is not completely determined, we study two models: the Tight-Winding Approximation (TWA) model, which represents a local approximation, and a model with self-consistent material arms named PERLAS. This is a mass distribution with more abrupt gravitational forces. We perform test particle simulations after tuning the two models to the observational range for the MW spiral arm properties. We explore the effects of the arm properties and find that a significant region o…
We use the distribution of accreted stars in SDSS-Gaia DR2 to demonstrate that a non-trivial fraction of the dark matter halo within Galactocentric radii of 7.5-10 kpc and $|z| > 2.5$ kpc is in substructure, and thus may not be in equilibrium. Using a mixture likelihood analysis, we separate the contributions of an old, isotropic stellar halo and a younger anisotropic population. The latter dominates and is uniform within the region studied. It can be explained as the tidal debris of a disrupted massive satellite on a highly radial orbit, and is consistent with mounting evidence from recent st…
We study the phase space available to the local stellar distribution using a Galactic potential consistent with several recent observational constraints. We find that the induced phase space structure has several observable consequences. The spiral arm contribution to the kinematic structure in the solar neighborhood may be as important as the one produced by the Galactic bar. We suggest that some of the stellar kinematic groups in the solar neighborhood, like the Hercules structure and the kinematic branches, can be created by the dynamical resonances of self-gravitating spiral arms and not e…
We present a kinematic analysis of the globular cluster (GC) system of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4365 and find several distinct kinematic substructures. This analysis is carried out using radial velocities for 269 GCs, obtained with the DEIMOS instrument on the Keck II telescope as part of the SAGES Legacy Unifying Globulars and Galaxies Survey (SLUGGS). We find that each of the three (formerly identified) GC colour subpopulations reveal distinct rotation properties. The rotation of the green GC subpopulation is consistent with the bulk of NGC 4365's stellar light, which `rolls' about th…
We construct a new sample of ~1700 solar neighbourhood halo subdwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, selected using a reduced proper motion diagram. Radial velocities come from the SDSS spectra and proper motions from the light-motion curve catalogue of Bramich et al. (2008). Using a photometric parallax relation to estimate distances gives us the full phase-space coordinates. Typical velocity errors are in the range 30-50 km/s. This halo sample is one of the largest constructed to-date and the disc contamination is at a level of < 1 per cent. This enables us to calculate the halo velocity…
We present a kinematical study of the nearly edge-on galaxy ESO 379-G006 that shows the existence of extraplanar ionized gas. With Fabry-Perot spectroscopy at H-alpha, we study the kinematics of ESO 379-G006 using velocity maps and position-velocity diagrams parallel to the major and to the minor axis of the galaxy. We build the rotation curve of the disk and discuss the role of projection effects due to the fact of viewing this galaxy nearly edge-on. The twisting of the isovelocities in the radial velocity field of the disk of ESO 379-G006 as well as the kinematic asymmetries found in some po…
We develop and implement a model to analyze the internal kinematics of galaxy clusters that may contain subpopulations of galaxies that do not independently trace the cluster potential. The model allows for substructures within the cluster environment, disentangles cluster members from contaminating foreground and background galaxies, and includes an overall cluster rotation term as part of the cluster kinematics. We estimate the cluster velocity dispersion and/or mass while marginalizing over uncertainties in all of the above complexities. In a first application to our published data for Abel…
(Abridged) We trace the interaction processes of galaxies at intermediate redshift by measuring the irregularity of their ionized gas kinematics, and investigate these irregularities as a function of the environment (cluster versus field) and of morphological type (spiral versus irregular). Our sample consists of 92 distant galaxies. 16 cluster (z~0.3 and z~0.5) and 29 field galaxies (mean z=0.44) of these have velocity fields with sufficient signal to be analyzed. We find that the fraction of galaxies that have irregular gas kinematics is remarkably similar in galaxy clusters and in the field…
We present spatially resolved distributions and kinematics of the stars and molecular gas in the central 320pc of NGC1097. The stellar continuum confirms the previously reported 3-arm spiral pattern extending into the central 100pc. The stellar kinematics and the gas distribution imply this is a shadowing effect due to extinction by gas and dust in the molecular spiral arms. The molecular gas kinematics show a strong residual (i.e. non-circular) velocity, which is manifested as a 2-arm kinematic spiral. Linear models indicate that this is the line-of-sight velocity pattern expected for a densi…
We present a harmonic expansion of the observed line-of-sight velocity field as a method to recover and investigate spiral structures in the nuclear regions of galaxies. We apply it to the emission-line velocity field within the circumnuclear starforming ring of NGC1097, obtained with the GMOS-IFU spectrograph. The radial variation of the third harmonic terms are well described by a logarithmic spiral, from which we interpret that the gravitational potential is weakly perturbed by a two-arm spiral density wave with inferred pitch angle of of 52+/-4 degrees. This interpretation predicts a two-a…
X-ray data analysis have found that fairly complex structures at cluster centres are more common than expected. Many of these structures have similar morphologies, which exhibit spiral-like substructure. It is not yet well known how these structures formed or are maintained. Understanding the origin of these spiral-like features at the centre of some clusters is the major motivation behind this work. We analyse deep \textit{Chandra} observations of 15 nearby galaxy clusters (0.01 $ < z < $ 0.06), and use X-ray temperature and substructure maps to detect small features at the cores of the clust…
We present a study of the kinematics of the isolated spiral galaxy NGC 864, using Hα Fabry-Perot data obtained with the GHαFaS instrument at the William Herschel Telescope in La Palma, complemented with images at 3.6 μm, in the R band and in Hα filter, and integral field spectroscopic data. The resulting data cubes and velocity maps allow the study of the kinematics of the galaxy, including in-depth investigations of the rotation curve, velocity moment maps, velocity residual maps, gradient maps and position-velocity diagrams. We find asymmetries in the velocity field in the bar zone, caused b…
Recent X-ray observations of galaxy clusters have shown that there is substructure present in the intracluster medium (ICM), even in clusters that are seemingly relaxed. This substructure is sometimes a result of sloshing of the ICM, which occurs in cool core clusters that have been disturbed by an off-axis merger with a sub-cluster or group. We present deep Chandra observations of the cool core cluster Abell 2029, which has a sloshing spiral extending radially outward from the center of the cluster to approximately 400 kpc at its fullest extent---the largest continuous spiral observed to date…
Kinematic surveys of the dwarf spheroidal (dSph) satellites of the Milky Way are revealing tantalising hints about the structure of dark matter (DM) haloes at the low-mass end of the galaxy luminosity function. At the bright end, modelling of spiral galaxies has shown that their rotation curves are consistent with the hypothesis of a Universal Rotation Curve whose shape is supported by a cored dark matter halo. In this paper, we investigate whether the internal kinematics of the Milky Way dSphs are consistent with the particular cored DM distributions which reproduce the properties of spiral g…
The gravitational field of Spiral galaxies is well traced by their rotation curves. Only recently it has become of extreme interest that the latter form a family ruled by two parameters of the {\it luminous} component: the disk length-scale $R_D$ and the magnitude $M_I$. This evidence is so strong and consequential that it must be taken as the starting point for the investigation on the issue of the dark matter in galaxies. The emerging fact is that structural quantities deeply rooted in the luminous components, like the disk length scales are found to tightly correlate with structural quantit…
Extensive photometric and spectroscopic surveys of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) have discovered tidal debris features throughout M31's stellar halo. We present stellar kinematics and metallicities in fields with identified substructure from our on-going SPLASH survey of M31 red giant branch stars with the DEIMOS spectrograph on the Keck II 10-m telescope. Radial velocity criteria are used to isolate members of the kinematically-cold substructures. The substructures are shown to be metal-rich relative to the rest of the dynamically hot stellar population in the fields in which they are found. We …
We present the results of a pilot project designed to study the distribution of dark matter haloes out to very large radii in spiral galaxies. As dynamical probe we use their rotation curves and the motions population of satellite galaxies. In this pilot stage, we observed seven late-type spiral galaxies of about the same luminosity M_R ~ -22 (and approximately the same mass). We investigate the kinematics of these galaxies, and the radial and angular distribution of their satellites. Using VIMOS at the VLT, we carried out a spectroscopic survey in seven 14' x 14' fields each around a late-typ…
DEAP-3600 is a single-phase liquid argon detector aiming to directly detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), located at SNOLAB (Sudbury, Canada). After analyzing data taken during the first year of operation, a null result was used to place an upper bound on the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent, isoscalar cross section. This study reinterprets this result within a Non-Relativistic Effective Field Theory framework, and further examines how various possible substructures in the local dark matter halo may affect these constraints. Such substructures are hinted at by kinematic structures…
Using neutral hydrogen (HI) rotation curves of 79 galaxies, culled from the literature, as well as measured from HI data, we present a method for classifying disk galaxies by their kinematics. In order to investigate fundamental kinematic properties we concentrate on non-interacting spiral galaxies. We employ a simple parameterized form for the rotation curve in order to derive the three parameters: the maximum rotational velocity, the turnover radius and a measure of the slope of the rotation curve beyond the turnover radius. Our approach uses the statistical Hierarchical Clustering method to…
