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C. Haydn, K.V. Johnston (Wesleyan University)
Simulations of the disruption of Milky Way satellite galaxies suggest that the debris can form long streams aligned with the satellite's orbit for the lifetime of the Galaxy. However, these simulations have typically been run in Milky Way potentials that are assumed to be smooth and static. In contrast, recent results from cosmological simulations of galaxy formation indicate that dark matter halos around galaxies could be filled with substructure.
In this poster we examine how the orbits of stars in tidal debris streams scatter in energy if an additional lumpy component is superposed on the smooth Milky Way background potential. We compare N-body simulations with analytic impulse approximation estimates for the magnitude of this effect and discuss the observational consequences of our results.