Constraining the Milky Way potential using the dynamical kinematic substructures

G. Monari^a, T. Antoja and A. Helmi

Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, PO Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands

^a e-mail: monari@astro.rug.nl

Published online: 07 February 2012

Abstract

We present a method to constrain the potential of the non-axisymmetric components of the Galaxy using the kinematics of stars in the solar neighborhood. The basic premise is that dynamical substructures in phase-space (i.e. due to the bar and/or spiral arms) are associated with families of periodic or irregular orbits, which may be easily identified in orbital frequency space. We use the “observed” positions and velocities of stars as initial conditions for orbital integrations in a variety of gravitational potentials. We then compute their characteristic frequencies, and study the structure present in the frequency maps. We find that the distribution of dynamical substructures in velocity- and frequency-space is best preserved when the integrations are performed in the “true” gravitational potential.