Context :

Aims : We investigate the kinematics of red clump stars in the Solar Neighbourhood by combining data from TGAS and RAVE to constrain the local dark matter density .

Methods : After calibrating the absolute magnitude of red clump stars , we characterize their velocity distribution over a radial distance range of 6 - 10 kpc and up to 1.5 kpc away from the Galactic plane .
We then apply the axisymmetric Jeans equations on subsets representing the thin and thick disks to determine the ( local ) distribution of mass near the disk of our Galaxy .

Results : Our kinematic maps are well-behaved permitting a straightforward local determination of the vertical force , which we find to be K _ { z } ^ { thin } = -2454 \pm 619 and K _ { z } ^ { thick } = -2141 \pm 774 ( \mathrm { km / s } ) ^ { 2 } / \mathrm { kpc } at 1.5 kpc away from the Galactic plane for the thin and thick disk samples and for thin and thick disk scale heights of 0.28 kpc and 1.12 kpc respectively .
These measurements can be translated into a local dark matter density \rho _ { \textrm { DM } } \sim 0.018 \pm 0.002 M _ { \odot } / \textrm { pc } ^ { 3 } .
The systematic error on this estimate is much larger than the quoted statistical error , since even a 10 % difference in the scale height of the thin disk leads to a 30 % change in the value of \rho _ { \textrm { DM } } , and a nearly equally good fit to the data .

Conclusions :