Weighing the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies using pulsar accelerations
Phys. Rev. D 113, 103008 – Published 5 May, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zz5s-zwh8
Abstract
The properties of dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way (MW) are useful for testing models of the formation of our Galaxy, and by extension various theories of cosmology. Recent efforts to measure the masses of the MW’s satellite dwarf galaxies have relied on the motions and positions of stars in the MW’s disk and halo, which are perturbed by the passage of satellite galaxies. As there are many known processes in our Galaxy that lead to observed disequilibrium in stars, these kinematic methods have been limited by the inherent difficulty in identifying only the perturbations due to particular satellite galaxies. To bypass some of these restrictions, we present a novel method for determining the masses of two MW satellite galaxies—the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy (Sgr dSph)—using only direct, instantaneous acceleration data derived from extremely precise timing of millisecond pulsars near the Sun. As the LMC and Sgr dSph orbit the MW, they cause wavelike distortions in the structure of the disk plus a large-scale offset in the centers of mass of the dark matter halo and the baryonic disk. These two effects lead to asymmetric accelerations above and below the disk midplane near the Sun, which is observed in the pulsar acceleration data. Notably, the amplitude of this asymmetry is shown to depend on the masses of the orbiting satellites. We analyze a grid of simulations with varying masses of each satellite in order to determine how well the observed acceleration asymmetry is reproduced by each pair of satellite masses. We find the total () mass enclosed within the tidal radius at the present day for the LMC to be within a radius of 16.6 kpc, and for Sgr to be within a radius of 5 kpc. These results are generally consistent and competitive with previous simulations and determinations of the masses of these objects, but entirely independent of any stellar kinematic data for the first time.
