Dwarf spheroidals with tidal tails and structure formation

Abstract

Recent N-Body simulations have shown that dIrrs evolve into dSphs owing to the strong tidal perturbation of the Milky Way. Satellites whose dark matter halos have a core or an NFW profile with a concentration $c < 5$ undergo severe stripping even on low eccentricity orbits and their remnants have projected stellar profiles that become flat at large radii as observed in some of the dSphs. Satellites with higher central densities, as predicted by CDM models, are more robust to tides and can reproduce the observations only on nearly radial orbits. Accurate proper motions for LG dSphs will allow to test current models of structure formation.