A GRAVITATIONAL DOUBLE-SCATTERING MECHANISM FOR GENERATING HIGH-VELOCITY OBJECTS DURING HALO MERGERS

We present a dynamical model that describes how halo particles can receive a significant energy kick from the merger between their own host halo and a target halo. This could provide a possible explanation for some high-velocity objects, including extended systems like globular clusters (GCs). In the model we especially introduce a double-scattering mechanism, where a halo particle receives a significant part of its total energy kick by first undergoing a gravitational deflection by the target halo and subsequently by its original host halo. This generates an energy kick that is due to the relative velocity between the halos during the deflections. We derive analytically the total kick energy of the particle, which is composed of energy from the double-scattering mechanism and tidal fields, as a function of its position in its original host halo just before merger. In the case of a 1:10 merger, we find that the presented mechanisms can easily generate particles with a velocity approximately two times the virial velocity of the target halo. This motivates us to suggest that the high velocity of the recently discovered GC HVGC-1 can be explained by a head-on halo merger. Finally, we illustrate the orbital evolution of high-velocity particles outside the virial sphere of the target halo by solving the equation of motion in an expanding universe. We find a sweet spot around a scale factor of 0.3-0.5 for ejecting particles into large orbits, which can easily reach beyond approximately five virial radii