The Impact of the Galactic Bar and the Large Magellanic Cloud on Hypervelocity Star Trajectories

Abstract Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) ejected from the Galactic center at speeds faster than the Galactic escape velocity are useful tools to provide insight into the Milky Way’s dark matter halo. However, most characterizations of HVS orbits assume static models of the Milky Way’s gravitational potential. In this work, we assess the influence of the Galactic bar and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) on HVS trajectories, comparing them with those from an axisymmetric potential. We simulate 28,000 HVSs ejected over the last 100 Myr and find that ignoring the bar and LMC can cause their apparent ejection location to drift by up to 100 pc. Applying two standard HVS potential fitting methods to our sample shows that they are unable to perform as designed when nonaxisymmetric effects are neglected. We calculate the angle between HVS Galactocentric position and velocity, and find the LMC and bar can induce a deflection angle of up to several degrees. Using mock Gaia Data Release 4 observations, however, we show that this deflection is too small in magnitude to be measured in the near future without significantly improved observational uncertainties, particularly in heliocentric distance. Our results emphasize the need to account for the bar and LMC in modeling the Galactic potential using HVSs as a tracer.