What to expect when using globular clusters as tracers of the total mass
  distribution in Milky Way-mass galaxies
  Dynamical models allow us to connect the motion of a set of tracers to the
underlying gravitational potential, and thus to the total (luminous and dark)
matter distribution. They are particularly useful for understanding the mass
and spatial distribution of dark matter (DM) in a galaxy. Globular clusters
(GCs) are an ideal tracer population in dynamical models, since they are bright
and can be found far out into the halo of galaxies. We aim to test how well
Jeans-Anisotropic-MGE (JAM) models using GCs (positions and line-of-sight
velocities) as tracers can constrain the mass and radial distribution of DM
halos. For this, we use the E-MOSAICS suite of 25 zoom-in simulations of L*
galaxies. We find that the DM halo properties are reasonably well recovered by
the JAM models. There is, however, a strong correlation between how well we
recover the mass and the radial distribution of the DM and the number of GCs in
the galaxy: the constraints get exponentially worse with fewer GCs, and at
least 150 GCs are needed in order to guarantee that the JAM model will perform
well. We find that while the data quality (uncertainty on the radial
velocities) can be important, the number of GCs is the dominant factor in terms
of the accuracy and precision of the measurements. This work shows promising
results for these models to be used in extragalactic systems with a sample of
more than 150 GCs.
