Large-Scale Model of the Milky Way: Stellar Kinematics and the Microlensing Event Timescale Distribution in the Galactic Bulge

2003/12/17 by Nicolai Bissantz, Victor P. Debattista, Ortwin Gerhard · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/382043

published as Astrophys.J. 601 (2004) L155-L158 · 13 pages, 3 figures. Accepted to ApJL

arxiv created 2003/12/17 · openalex publication_date 2004/01/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

We build a stellar-dynamical model of the Milky Way's barred bulge and disk, using a newly implemented adaptive particle method. The underlying mass model has been previously shown to match the Galactic near-infrared surface brightness as well as gas-kinematic observations. Here we show that the new stellar-dynamical model also matches the observed stellar kinematics in several bulge fields and that its distribution of microlensing event timescales reproduces the observed timescale distribution of the MACHO experiment with a reasonable stellar mass function. The model is therefore an excellent basis for further studies of the Milky Way. We also predict the observational consequences of this mass function for parallax shifted events.

Citations

• On position angle errors in the Tremaine-Weinberg method

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