Exploration of Halo Substructures in Integrals-of-motion Space with Gaia Data Release 3

Abstract

Using kinematic data from the Gaia Data Release 3 catalog, along with metallicity estimates robustly derived from Gaia BP/RP spectra, we have explored the Galactic stellar halo in search of both known and potentially new substructures. By applying the Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise clustering algorithm in integrals-of-motion space (i.e., E, Lz, and L⊥ ), we identified five previously known substructures: Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE), Helmi streams, I'itoi and Sequoia, and the hot thick disk. We additionally found NGC 3201 and NGC 5139 in this work, and NGC 3201 shares similar distributions in phase space and metallicities to Arjuna, which possibly implies that they have the same origin. Three newly discovered substructures are Prograde Substructure 1 (PG1), Prograde Substructure 2 (PG2), and the Low Energy Group. PG1, with a higher Vϕ than typical GSE member stars, is considered as either a low-eccentricity and metal-rich part of GSE or part of the metal-poor disk. PG2, sharing kinematic similarities with Aleph, is thought to be its relatively highly eccentric component or the mixture of Aleph and the disk. The Low Energy Group, whose metal-poor component of metallicity distribution function has a mean value [M/H] ∼ −1.29 (compared to that of Heracles [M/H] ∼ −1.26), may have associations with Heracles.