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    Variable gravitational potential of Milky Way analogs in the HESTIA suite

    Naira R. Arakelyan and Sergey V. Pilipenko*

    Stefan Gottlöber and Noam I. Libeskind

    Gustavo Yepes

    Yehuda Hoffman

    • *Contact author: spilipenko@asc.rssi.ru

    Phys. Rev. D 112, 043515 – Published 14 August, 2025

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/m2tm-tbm4

    Abstract

    Investigations of trajectories of various objects orbiting the Milky Way (MW) halo with modern precision, achievable in observations by Gaia, requires sophisticated, nonstationary models of the Galactic potential. In this paper we analyze the evolution of the spherical harmonics expansion of MW analogs potential in constrained simulations of the Local Group (LG) from the HESTIA suite. We find that at distances r≥100  kpc, the nonspherical part of the potential demonstrates a significant impact of the environment: ignoring the mass distribution outside the virial radius of the MW results in >20% errors in the potential quadrupole at these distances. Account of the environment results in a noticeable change of the angular momenta of objects orbiting MW analogs. Spherical harmonics vary significantly during the last 6 Gyr. We attribute variations of the potential at r≥30  kpc to the motions of MW satellites and LG galaxies. We also predict that the nonsphericity of the real MW potential should grow with distance in the range rvir<r<500  kpc, since all realizations of simulated MW-like objects demonstrate such a trend.

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