No Stream Left Unscathed: The imprint of a host galaxy

[2605.16200] No Stream Left Unscathed: The imprint of a host galaxy Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Astrophysics > Astrophysics of Galaxies arXiv:2605.16200 (astro-ph) [Submitted on 15 May 2026] Title: No Stream Left Unscathed: The imprint of a host galaxy Authors: Arpit Arora , Peter S. Ferguson , Jacob Nibauer , Nora Shipp , Videep Reddy , Eugene Vasiliev , Jack Kohm , Laurella C. Marin , Adrian M. Price-Whelan , Denis Erkal , Sarah Pearson , Andrew Wetzel , Jeremy Bailin , Robert Feldmann View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Stellar streams from disrupted globular clusters are excellent probes of dark matter (DM) subhalos. Observed Milky Way streams display a remarkable diversity of features: spurs, gaps, kinks, cocoons, and density variations, many attributed to subhalo encounters. But how much of this diversity arises from the host itself? We simulate $\sim$15,000 globular cluster streams across four Milky Way-mass halos from the FIRE-2 cosmological simulations, evolved in basis function expansion potentials capturing the evolving disk, halo, and large-scale structure while excluding small-scale perturbers such as DM subhalos and giant molecular clouds. We find that roughly three quarters of streams develop complex features from the host potential, such as spurs, kinks, and cocoon-like envelopes. Even the smoothest streams exhibit 10--25\% width variation along their track and host overdensities and gaps at scales of ${\sim}2^\circ$, squarely in the $1^\circ$--$5^\circ$ range predicted for subhalo-induced gaps. Pericentric distance is the primary predictor of stream morphology, with ${\sim}15$ kpc separating smooth from disturbed streams and circular orbits beyond $\sim$20 kpc producing the smoothest streams. Only $\sim$70 out of $\sim$15,000 streams are free of detectable wiggles in the track at any scale. Analogs to observed features, such as the GD-1 spur and the ATLAS--Aliqa Uma kink, emerge even without the presence of subhalos. As next-generation surveys (LSST, Euclid, and Roman) resolve stream structure across hundreds of streams, the baseline established here, streams evolved without small-scale perturbers, becomes essential for extracting DM substructure constraints. Comments: 34 pages, 24 figures, submitted to APJ. Comments are welcome! Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) Cite as: arXiv:2605.16200 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2605.16200v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.16200 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Related DOI : https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae89af Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Arpit Arora [ view email ] [v1] Fri, 15 May 2026 17:13:55 UTC (1,567 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: astro-ph.GA < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: astro-ph References & Citations SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) IArxiv recommender toggle IArxiv Recommender ( What is IArxiv? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. 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