Measurement of Substructure from the Kinematics of the GD-1 Stellar Stream

Stellar streams are sensitive tracers of low-mass dark matter subhalos and provide a means to test the cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm on small scales. In this work, we connect the intrinsic velocity dispersion of the GD-1 stream to the number density and internal structure of dark matter subhalos in the mass range 10⁵–10⁹ M_⊙. We measure the radial velocity dispersion of GD-1 based on 160 identified member stars across four different spectroscopic catalogs. We use repeat observations of the same stars to constrain binarity. We find that the stream's intrinsic radial velocity dispersion ranges from approximately 2–5 km s⁻¹ across its length. The region of GD-1 with the highest velocity dispersion represents a 4σ deviation from unperturbed stream models formed in a smooth Milky Way potential, which are substantially colder. We use perturbation theory to model the stream’s velocity dispersion as a function of dark matter subhalo population parameters, including the number of low-mass subhalos in the Milky Way, the dark matter half-mode mass, and the mass–concentration relation of subhalos. We find that the observed velocity dispersion can be explained by numerous impacts with low-mass dark matter subhalos or by a single impact with a very compact subhalo with M ≳ 10⁸ M_⊙. Our constraint on the fraction of mass in subhalos is (Formula presented) fsub=0.05−0.03+0.08 (68% confidence). In both scenarios, our model prefers subhalos that are more compact compared to CDM mass–size expectations. These results suggest a possible deviation from CDM at low subhalo masses.