Evidence of a dwarf galaxy stream populating the inner Milky Way Halo

Abstract

Stellar streams produced from dwarf galaxies provide direct evidence of the hierarchical formation of the Milky Way. Here, we present the first comprehensive study of the "LMS-1" stellar stream, that we detect by searching for wide streams in the Gaia EDR3 dataset using the STREAMFINDER algorithm. This stream was recently discovered by Yuan et al. (2020). We detect LMS-1 as a $60\deg$ long stream to the north of the Galactic bulge, at a distance of $\sim 20$ kpc from the Sun, together with additional components that suggest that the overall stream is completely wrapped around the inner Galaxy. Using spectroscopic measurements from LAMOST, SDSS and APOGEE, we infer that the stream is very metal poor (${\rm \langle [Fe/H]\rangle =-2.1}$) with a significant metallicity dispersion ($\sigma_{\rm [Fe/H]}=0.4$), and it possesses a large radial velocity dispersion (${\rm \sigma_v=20 \pm 4\,km\,s^{-1}}$). These estimates together imply that LMS-1 is a dwarf galaxy stream. The orbit of LMS-1 is close to polar, with an inclination of $75\deg$ to the Galactic plane. Both the orbit and metallicity of LMS-1 are remarkably similar to the globular clusters NGC 5053, NGC 5024 and the stellar stream "Indus". These findings make LMS-1 an important contributor to the stellar population of the inner Milky Way halo.