CHARTING UNEXPLORED DWARF GALAXY TERRITORY WITH RR LYRAE

Observational biases against finding Milky Way (MW) dwarf galaxies at low Galactic latitudes (b less than or similar to 20 degrees) and at low surface brightnesses (mu(V, 0) greater than or similar to 29 mag arcsec(-2)) currently limit our understanding of the faintest limits of the galaxy luminosity function. This paper is a proof-of-concept that groups of two or more RR Lyrae stars could reveal MW dwarf galaxies at d > 50 kpc in these unmined regions of parameter space, with only modest contamination from interloper groups when large halo structures are excluded. For example, a friends-of-friends (FOF) search with a 2D linking length of 500 pc could reveal dwarf galaxies more luminous than M-V = -3.2 mag and with surface brightnesses as faint as 31 mag arcsec-2 (or even fainter, depending on RR Lyrae specific frequency). Although existing public RR Lyrae catalogs are highly incomplete at d > 50 kpc and/or include <1% of the MW halo's volume, a FOF search reveals two known dwarfs (Bootes I and Sextans) and two dwarf candidate groups possibly worthy of follow-up. PanSTARRS 1 (PS1) may catalog RR Lyrae to 100 kpc (in the absence of Galactic extinction) which would include up to similar to 15% of predicted MW dwarf galaxies. Groups of PS1 RR Lyrae should therefore reveal very low surface brightness and low Galactic latitude dwarfs within its footprint, if they exist. With sensitivity to RR Lyrae to d greater than or similar to 600 kpc, LSST is the only planned survey that will be both wide-field and deep enough to use RR Lyrae to definitively measure the MW's dwarf galaxy census to extremely low surface brightnesses, and through the Galactic plane.