Stellar Mass Segregation in Dark Matter Halos

Abstract: We study the effect of stellar mass segregation driven by collisional relaxation within the potential well of a smooth dark matter halo. This effect is of particular relevance for old stellar systems with short crossing times, where small collisional perturbations accumulate over many dynamical time scales. We run collisional $N$-body simulations tailored to the ambiguous stellar systems Ursa Major 3/Unions 1, Delve 1 and Eridanus 3, modelling their stellar populations as two-component systems of high- and low-mass stars, respectively. For Ursa Major 3/Unions 1 (Delve 1), assuming a dynamical-to-stellar mass ratio of 10, we find that after 10 Gyr of evolution, the radial extent of its low-mass stars will be twice as large (40 per cent larger) than that of its high-mass stars. We show that weak tides do not alter this relative separation of half-light radii, whereas for the case of strong tidal fields, mass segregation facilitates the tidal stripping of low-mass stars. We further find that as the population of high-mass stars contracts and cools, the number of dynamically formed binaries within that population increases. Our results call for caution when using stellar mass segregation as a criterion to separate star clusters from dwarf galaxies, and suggest that mass segregation increases the abundance of massive binaries in the central regions of dark matter-dominated dwarf galaxies.