On the Stability of Tidal Streams

Details On the Stability of Tidal Streams On the Stability of Tidal Streams

2011-03-16

arxiv.org/abs/1103.3276v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Scientific paper

We explore the stability of tidal streams to perturbations, motivated by recent claims that the clumpy structure of the stellar streams surrounding the globular cluster Palomar 5 are the result of gravitational instability. We calculate the Jeans length of tidal streams by treating them as a thin expanding cylinder of collisionless matter. We also find a general relation between the density and the velocity dispersion inside a stream, which is used to determine the longitudinal Jeans criterion. Our analytic results are checked by following the time evolution of the phase space density within streams using numerical simulations. We conclude that tidal streams within our galactic halo are stable on all length scales and over all timescales.

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