Detectability of dark matter subhalos in Milky Way stellar streams

by Prof. Tongyan Lin (University of California, San Diego)

Tuesday Mar 31, 2026, 3:00 PM → 4:00 PM Pacific/Honolulu

Room 112 (Watanabe Hall)

Stellar streams are a promising way to probe the gravitational effects of low-mass dark matter (DM) subhalos. In recent years, there has been a remarkable explosion in the number of stellar streams detected in the Milky Way, and hundreds more may be discovered with future surveys such as LSST. Studies of DM subhalo impacts on streams have so far focused on a few of the thinnest and brightest streams, and it is not known how much information can be gained from combining known streams. I will discuss our work to assess (i) the minimum subhalo mass detectable in a stream and (ii) the number of impacts detected across MW streams. Applying our results to confirmed Milky Way streams, we rank order them by their sensitivity to DM subhalos.