Title: Inferring the Galactic gravitational potential with Gaia and friends

Abstract:
Tidal streams can be used to infer the Galactic gravitational potential thanks to the common 
origin of the stars in each one. I will present a method for doing so by maximizing the 
information content (i.e. clumpiness) of the action space of the stream stars. This statistical 
approach eliminates the need to assign stars to particular streams, allowing us to use the entire 
accreted stellar halo simultaneously. Using a toy model of the stellar halo in a known potential, 
and including updated error models for Gaia, I will show how ground-based spectroscopic 
follow-up of faint halo stars and/or precise distance estimates for halo RR Lyrae will improve our 
ability to measure the gravitational potential when combined with the Gaia catalog. By fitting a 
spherical NFW potential to streams in a cosmologically simulated halo, I will illustrate how 
oversimplification of the potential model affects fit results. This material is based upon work 
supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. AST-1400989.