The distribution of satellite galaxies: the great pancake

By N. Libeskind, Carlos S. Frenk, Shaun Cole, John C. Helly, Adrian Jenkins, J. Navarro, C. Power. 2005

193 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The 11 known satellite galaxies within 250 kpc of the Milky Way lie close to a great circle on the sky. We use high-resolution N-body simulations of galactic dark matter haloes to test if this remarkable property can be understood within the context of the cold dark matter (CDM) cosmology. We construct halo merger trees from the simulations and use a semi-analytic model to follow the formation of satellite galaxies. We find that in all six of our simulations, the 11 brightest satellites are indeed distributed along thin, disc-like structures analogous to that traced by the satellites of the Milky Way. This is in sharp contrast to the overall distributions of dark matter in the halo and of subhaloes within it, which, although triaxial, are not highly aspherical. We find that the spatial distribution of satellites is significantly different from that of the most massive subhaloes but is similar to that of the subset of subhaloes that had the most massive progenitors at earlier times. The elongated disc-like structure delineated by the satellites has its long axis aligned with the major axis of the dark matter halo. We interpret our results as reflecting the preferential infall of satellites along the spines of a few filaments of the cosmic web.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1c58c9d7d01cb8da8de262333fa2352d140a07e3

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Citations in the corpus

Small Dwarf Galaxies within Larger Dwarfs: Why Some Are Luminous while Most Go Dark (2008, background): “For example, Libeskind et al. (2005) determined that subhalos are anisotropically distributed in cosmological CDM simulations and that the most massive satellites tend to be aligned with filaments.”
The current status of galaxy formation (2012, background): “However, infall onto halos is not spherically symmetric (Aubert et al., 2004), and subhalos tend to lie in a plane (Libeskind et al., 2005).”
Detection of large-scale intrinsic ellipticity—density correlation from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and implications for weak lensing surveys (2005, result): “…et al. 1982; Zaritsky et al. 1997; Sales & Lambas 2004; Brainerd 2005) and with simulations (Navarro et al. 2004; Azzaro et al. 2005; Kang et al. 2005; Libeskind et al. 2005; Zentner et al. 2005), and is another possible explanation, though unlike for clusters the results – magnitude and even…”
The shape of dark matter haloes in the Aquarius simulations: evolution and memory (2011, background): “…& Saurer 2003; Yang et al. 2006; Faltenbacher et al. 2007; God lowski & Flin 2010; Paz et al. 2011) and also numerical simulations (e.g. Knebe et al. 2004; Libeskind et al. 2005, 2007; Kang et al. 2007; Sales et al. 2007; Bailin et al. 2008; Faltenbacher et al. 2008; Libeskind et al. 2011).”
The alignment between the distribution of satellites and the orientation of their central galaxy (2006, background): “In particular, numerous studies have shown that dark matter haloes in dissipationless simulations have anisotropic distributions of subhaloes that are aligned with their major axis (Knebe et al. 2004; Zentner et al. 2005b; Wang et al. 2005; Libeskind et al. 2005).”
Dwarf galaxy planes: the discovery of symmetric structures in the Local Group (2013, background): “Another attempt to reconcile the planar MW satel- lite distribution with expectations from cosmological models was the suggestion that luminous sub-haloes are accreted along dark matter filaments (Libeskind et al. 2005, 2010; Lovell et al. 2011).”
The spatial distribution of the Milky Way and Andromeda satellite galaxies (2006, methodology): “In previous works (Hartwick 2000; Kroupa et al. 2005; Kang et al. 2005; Libeskind et al. 2005; Zentner et al. 2005; Koch & Grebel 2006) the planarity of the satellite distribution was quantified based on the ‘thickness’ of the distribution in relation to some measure of the total spatial extent:…”
Co-orbiting satellite galaxy structures are still in conflict with the distribution of primordial dwarf galaxies (2014, background): “…1 The feature which we call the VPOS is called the ’Magellanic plane’ by Kunkel & Demers (1976) and Lynden-Bell (1976); the ’great pancake’ by Libeskind et al. (2005), Li & Helmi (2008) and Wang et al. (2013); and the disc of satellites by Kroupa et al. (2005) and Metz et al. (2008).”
The properties of warm dark matter haloes (2013, unknown): “A simple extrapolation multiplying the observed number by a factor of 5 has to be taken with caution because we know that the classical satellites are not distributed isotropically but are concentrated towards a plane, called the ‘Great pancake’ by Libeskind et al. (2005).”
Galactic Searches for Dark Matter (2012, background): “y Way disk (Lynden-Bell, 1976). As discussed in the next section, this may be a re ection of the fact that dark matter satellites accrete in an anisotropic 46 manner along laments into the Milky Way (Libeskind et al., 2005; Zentner et al., 2005). It has also been hypothesized that the observed popul”
The stellar halo of the Galaxy (2008, background): “This can be reconciled with cold dark matter models if these galaxies have fallen in from a few directions, perhaps in groups (Li & Helmi 2008), or along filaments (Libeskind et al. 2005; Zentner et al. 2005; Kang et al. 2005).”
Thin, thick and dark discs in ΛCDM (2008, background): “From our four sample haloes, we find two that have a very anisotropic merger history; indeed infall along filaments is expected to give rise to some anisotropy (Knebe et al. 2004; Libeskind et al. 2005; Zentner et al. 2005).”
A kinematic classification of the cosmic web (2012, background): “Further more the dynamics of sub-halos and satellite galaxies suggests a possible dependence on the environment within which their parent halos reside (Knebe et al. 2004; Libeskind et al. 2005, 2011).”
The Orbital Poles of Milky Way Satellite Galaxies: A Rotationally Supported Disk of Satellites (2008, methodology): “The simulations and galaxy formation models are described in Libeskind et al. (2005) and references therein.”
The APOSTLE simulations: solutions to the Local Group's cosmic puzzles (2015, background): “This supports the scenario proposed by Libeskind et al. (2005), whereby the accretion of satellites from the ‘cosmic web’ imparts a degree of coherence to the timing and direction of satellite accretion.”