The GALAH Survey: Velocity fluctuations in the Milky Way using red clump giants

Abstract

If the Galaxy is axisymmetric and in dynamical equilibrium, we expect negligible fluctuations in the residual line-of-sight velocity field. Recent results using the \apg{} survey find significant fluctuations in velocity for stars in the midplane ($|z|<$0.25 kpc) out to 5 kpc, suggesting that the dynamical influence of non-axisymmetric features i.e., the Milky Way's bar, spiral arms and merger events extends out to the Solar neighborhood. Their measured power spectrum has a characteristic amplitude of 11 \kms{} on a scale of 2.5 kpc. The existence of such large-scale streaming motions has important implications for determining the Sun's motion about the Galactic Centre. Using Red Clump stars from \glh{} and \apg{}, we map the line-of-sight velocities around the Sun (d$<$5 kpc), and $|z|<$1.25 kpc from the midplane. By subtracting a smooth axisymmetric model for the velocity field, we study the residual fluctuations and compare our findings with mock survey generated by \glx{}. We find negligible large-scale fluctuations away from the plane. In the mid-plane, we reproduce the earlier \apg{} power spectrum but with 20\% smaller amplitude (9.3 \kms{}) after taking into account a few systematics (e.g., volume completeness). Using a flexible axisymmetric model the power-amplitude is further reduced to 6.3 \kms{}. Additionally, our simulations show that, in the plane, distances are underestimated for high-mass Red Clump stars which can lead to spurious power-amplitude of about 5.2 \kms{}. Taking this into account, we estimate the amplitude of real fluctuations to be $<$4.6 \kms{}, about a factor of three less than the \apg{} result.

20 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS