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The mass distribution and gravitational potential of the Milky Way
Open accessAbstract
We present mass models of the Milky Way created to fit observational constraints and to be consistent with expectations from theoretical modelling. The method used to create these models is that demonstrated in our previous study, and we improve on those models by adding gas discs to the potential, considering the effects of allowing the inner slope of the halo density profile to vary, and including new observations of maser sources in the Milky Way amongst the new constraints. We provide a best-fitting model, as well as estimates of the properties of the Milky Way. Under the assumptions in our main model, we find that the Sun is R0 = 8.20 ± 0.09 kpc from the Galactic Centre, with the circular speed at the Sun being v0 = 232.8 ± 3.0 km s−1; and that the Galaxy has a total stellar mass of (54.3 ± 5.7) × 109 M⊙, a total virial mass of (1.30 ± 0.30) × 1012 M⊙ and a local dark-matter density of 0.40 ± 0.04 GeV cm−3, where the quoted uncertainties are statistical. These values are sensitive to our choice of priors and constraints. We investigate systematic uncertainties, which in some cases may be larger. For example, if we weaken our prior on R0, we find it to be 7.97 ± 0.15 kpc and that v0 = 226.8 ± 4.2 km s−1. We find that most of these properties, including the local dark-matter density, are remarkably insensitive to the assumed power-law density slope at the centre of the dark-matter halo. We find that it is unlikely that the local standard of rest differs significantly from that found under assumptions of axisymmetry. We have made code to compute the force from our potential, and to integrate orbits within it, publicly available.
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“Such studies argue that the Galactic halo has a very high concentration, typically ∼ 14 or higher”
From The milky way total mass profile as inferred from Gaia DR2 (2020) · cites this paper as McMillan 2017
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
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“This stellar mass is in good agreement with estimates for the MW (e.g. Bovy & Rix 2013; McMillan 2017, and Section 5)”
From The milky way total mass profile as inferred from Gaia DR2 (2020) · cites this paper as McMillan 2017
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“and even more flexible formulae, such as the generalised NFW profile (gNFW, which has been used to model the MW halo - McMillan 2017; Karukes et al. 2019b), struggle to describe the radial profile of the contracted halo.”
From The milky way total mass profile as inferred from Gaia DR2 (2020) · cites this paper as McMillan 2017
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“They correspond to an HI mass of 1 . 1 × 10 10 M ⊙ and a molecular gas mass of 10 percent of the HI mass.”
From The milky way total mass profile as inferred from Gaia DR2 (2020) · cites this paper as McMillan 2017
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Cites
Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines
Metropolis, N., Rosenbluth, A. W., Rosenbluth, M. N., Teller, A. H., & Teller, E. (1953) · The Journal of Chemical Physics · doi:10.1063/1.1699114 · Cited by 37,192
Foreman-Mackey, D., Hogg, D. W., Lang, D., & Goodman, J. (2013) · Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific · doi:10.1086/670067 · Cited by 14,336 · cited 1×
“As a test, we have also used the affine invariant MCMC sampler proposed byGoodman & Weare(2010), and packaged asemcee by Foreman-Mackey et al.(2013), to explore the pdf of some of our models, and found essentially identical results.”
ResultSEVEN-YEAR WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE(WMAP) OBSERVATIONS: COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION
Komatsu, E., Smith, K. M., Dunkley, J., Bennett, C. L., Gold, B., Hinshaw, G., Jarosik, N., Larson, D., Nolta, M. R., Page, L., et al. (2011) · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · doi:10.1088/0067-0049/192/2/18 · Cited by 8,802 · cited 1×
“The critical density is ρcrit = 3H2 8πG (6) where we takeH = 70.4 km s−1 Mpc−1 from Komatsu et al.(2011).”
BackgroundInfluentialThe Structure of Cold Dark Matter Halos
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Prusti, T., de Bruijne, J. H. J., Brown, A. G. A., Vallenari, A., Babusiaux, C., Bailer‐Jones, C. A. L., Bastian, U., Biermann, M., Evans, D. W., Eyer, L., et al. (2016) · Astronomy and Astrophysics · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201629272 · Cited by 7,350
THE SEVENTH DATA RELEASE OF THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY
Abazajian, K. N., Adelman-McCarthy, J. K., Agüeros, M. A., Allam, S. S., Prieto, C. A., An, D., Anderson, K. S. J., Anderson, S. F., Annis, J., Bahcall, N. A., et al. (2009) · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · doi:10.1088/0067-0049/182/2/543 · Cited by 5,341 · cited 1×
“…‘hole’ in the stellar density for the same reasons given in Paper I. TheJurić et al.(2008) analysis of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS:Abazajian et al. 2009) showed that the approximation to exponential profiles is a sensible one for the Milky Way, and produced estimates based on…”
MethodSimulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars
Springel, V., White, S. D. M., Jenkins, A. R., Frenk, C. S., Yoshida, N., Gao, L., Navarro, J. F., Thacker, R. J., Croton, D., Helly, J. C., et al. (2005) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature03597 · Cited by 5,060 · cited 1×
“The relationship betweenM∗ and Mv was determined by ‘abundance matching’ of the galaxy stellar masses found byLi & White (2009) with the halo virial masses found in the Millennium simulations (Springel et al. 2005; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2009).”
MethodEnsemble samplers with affine invariance
Goodman, J. B., & Weare, J. (2010) · Communications in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science · doi:10.2140/camcos.2010.5.65 · Cited by 3,075
corner.py: Scatterplot matrices in Python
Foreman-Mackey, D. T. (2016) · The Journal of Open Source Software · doi:10.21105/joss.00024 · Cited by 2,183 · cited 1×
“The corner plots were created with thecorner.py package (Foreman-Mackey 2016).”
MethodLocal kinematics and the local standard of rest
Schönrich, R. A., Binney, J. J., & Dehnen, W. (2010) · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16253.x · Cited by 1,934 · cited 5×
“…a R0 in an axisymmetric approximation of the true potential (i.e. what we find in this study), and the velocity of a closed orbit,and therefore a theoretical 0 km s−1 dispersion population, in the Solar neighbourhood (which is what is found by local measurementslike that of Schönrich et al. 2010).”
BackgroundMethodInfluential
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Naiman, J., Pillepich, A., Springel, V., Ramirez-Ruiz, E., Torrey, P., Vogelsberger, M., Pakmor, R., Nelson, D., Marinacci, F., Hernquist, L., et al. (2017) · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · doi:10.1093/mnras/sty618 · Cited by 693
“First, we select for galaxies with a total halo mass, M200,crit, in the range (0.6−2)×1012 M (Eadie et al. 2015; McMillan 2017; Zaritsky & Courtois 2017), which results in approximately 2000 galaxies.”
MethodInfluentialThe merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way’s inner stellar halo and thick disk
Helmi, A., Babusiaux, C., Koppelman, H. H., Massari, D., Veljanoski, J., & Brown, A. G. A. (2018) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0625-x · Cited by 1,235
Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems
Tauris, T. M., Kramer, M., Freire, P. C. C., Wex, N., Janka, H., Langer, N., Podsiadlowski, P., Bozzo, E., Chaty, S., Kruckow, M. U., et al. (2017) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa7e89 · Cited by 693
“Finally, to convert the SSB velocity vector to the LSR we have used the Galactic model of McMillan (2017).”
MethodHelmi, A., van Leeuwen, F., McMillan, P. J., Massari, D., Antoja, T., Robin, A. C., Lindegren, L., Bastian, U., Arenou, F., Babusiaux, C., et al. (2018) · Astronomy and Astrophysics · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201832698 · Cited by 648
“We have found relatively small differences in the orbits in three different realistic Galactic potentials when we integrated over short timescales (the potentials are based on Allen & San- Article number, page 22 of 49 tillan 1991; Robin et al. 2003; McMillan 2017).”
InfluentialSelf-citationThe GALAH+ survey: Third data release
Buder, S., Sharma, S., Kos, J., Amarsi, A. M., Nordlander, T., LIND, K., Martell, S. L., Asplund, M., Bland‐Hawthorn, J., Casey, A. R., et al. (2021) · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · doi:10.1093/mnras/stab1242 · Cited by 680
“For our calculations we use the best fitting axisymmetric potential by McMillan (2017) with a Solar radius of 8.21 kpc, consistent with the latest measurement by Gravity Collaboration et al. (2019) of 8.178 ± 0.013stat.”
MethodInfluential
Metadata
- Authors
- McMillan, P. J.
- Affiliations
- Lund University (SE)
- Corresponding author
- McMillan, Paul J.
- ORCID
- McMillan, Paul J.
- Venue
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2016-10-26
- Volume
- 465
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 76-94
- ISSN
- 0035-8711 (ISSN-L)
- 1365-2966
- OpenAlex
- W2485876312
- Cited by
- 1,099
- References
- 128
- Citations by year
- 2026: 104 · 2025: 165 · 2024: 154 · 2023: 126 · 2022: 120 · 2021: 121 · 2020: 118 · 2019: 88 · 2018: 64 · 2017: 36 · 2016: 3
- FWCI
- 30.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- Lund University Publications (Lund University) (submittedVersion)
- HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations
- Keywords
- Milky Way mass distribution, gravitational potential, dark matter halos, stellar mass, virial mass, local dark matter density, local standard of rest, halo density profiles, gas discs, orbit integration, axial symmetry
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