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The Sagittarius Impact on Light and Dark Structure in the Milky Way

It is increasingly apparent that common merger events play a large role in the evolution of disk galaxies at all cosmic times, from the wet accretion of gas-filled dwarf galaxies during the era of peak star formation, to the collisions between large, dynamically-advanced spiral galaxies and their dry companion satellites, a type of interaction that continues to influence disk structure into the present day. We also live in a large spiral galaxy currently undergoing a series of impacts from an infalling, disrupting dwarf galaxy. As next-generation astrometry proposes to place our understanding of the Milky Way spiral structure on a much firmer footing, we analyze high-resolution numerical models of this disk-satellite interaction in order to assess the dynamical response of our home Galaxy to the Sagittarius dwarf impact, and possible implications for experiments hoping to directly detect dark matter passing through the Earth.