The Dynamics of Sinking Satellites around Disk Galaxies: A Poor Man’s Alternative to High-Resolution Numerical Simulations

By James E. Taylor, Arif Babul. 2000

180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have developed a simple yet surprisingly accurate analytic scheme for tracking the dynamical evolution of substructure within dark matter halos. The scheme incorporates the effects of dynamical friction, tidal mass loss, and tidal heating via physically motivated approximations. Using our scheme, we can predict the orbital evolution and mass-loss history of individual subhalos in detail. We are also able to determine the impact and importance of the different physical processes on the dynamical evolution of the subhalos. To test and calibrate this model, we compare it with a set of recent high-resolution numerical simulations of mergers between galaxies and small companions. We find that we can reproduce the orbits and mass-loss rates seen in all of these simulations with considerable accuracy, using a single set of values for the three free parameters in our model. Computationally, our scheme is more than 1000 times faster than the simplest of the high-resolution numerical simulations. This means that we can carry out detailed and statistically meaningful investigations into the characteristics of the subhalo population in different cosmologies, the stripping and disruption of the subhalos, and the interactions of the subhalos with other dynamical structures such as a thin disk. This last point is of particular interest given the ubiquity of minor mergers in hierarchical models. In this regard, our method's simplicity and speed makes it particularly attractive for incorporation into semianalytic models of galaxy formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/59711f66bf720d69ed68f1d98f00329967505fe5

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Citations in the corpus

SUBSTRUCTURE DEPLETION IN THE MILKY WAY HALO BY THE DISK (2009, background): “Third, when an object plunges through the dense baryonic disk, it will be subject to a process known asdisk shocking (Ostriker et al. 1972; Binney & Tremaine 1987) which can, in some circumstances, produce a much stronger response than tidal stripping (Taylor & Babul 2001).”
Ram pressure stripping the hot gaseous haloes of galaxies in groups and clusters (2007, methodology): “We do not attempt to model the stripping of the dark matter, as there are already several published analytic studies which reproduce the dark matter stripping and tidal heating in simulations well (e.g., Taylor & Babul 2001; Benson et al. 2002).”
The Physics of Galaxy Clustering. I. A Model for Subhalo Populations (2004, methodology): “As we discuss below, our model is similar in many respects to the model developed by Taylor & Babul (2001, 2004a), and shares common ingredients with the models of Benson et al. (2002), Oguri & Lee (2004), and van den Bosch, Tormen, & Gioccoli (2004b).”
Small scale problems of the $\Lambda$CDM model: a short review (2016, methodology): “omentum exchange from baryons clumps to DM, that ﬂattens the density proﬁles. The effect of tidal stripping and heating on the satellites were modelled with a combination of the procedures from Refs. [393] and [75]. In summary, the method proceeded in two main phases. The ﬁrst phase calculated the s”
A Fitting Formula for the Merger Timescale of Galaxies in Hierarchical Clustering (2007, methodology): “In a future paper(Faltenbacher et al. 2007, in preparation), we will explore this qualitative explanation using an analytical model similar to those of Zentner & Bullock (2003) and Zentner et al. (2005) (see also, Bullock et al. 2000; Taylor & Babul 2001, 2004).”
Properties of galaxy groups in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – II. Active galactic nucleus feedback and star formation truncation (2006, background): “Formalisms to describe tidal stripping in the presence of dynamical friction in a background potential have been developed by, among others, Taylor & Babul (2001, 2004) and Zentner & Bullock (2003).”
Are the Magellanic Clouds on Their First Passage about the Milky Way? (2007, methodology): “Although the Chandrasekhar formula is strictly appropriate for the idealized scenario of an infinite, uniform, nonYself-gravitating stellar background, dynamical friction studies suggest that this approximation can be applied to more general situations (Zentner & Bullock 2003; Taylor & Babul 2001).”
Characterization of subhalo structural properties and implications for dark matter annihilation signals (2016, background): “Tidal stripping removes mass from the outer parts of subhalos and, as a result, subhalos are truncated at smaller radii compared to field halos of the same mass (Ghigna et al. 1998; Taylor & Babul 2001; Kravtsov et al. 2004; Diemand et al. 2007a,b).”
A primer on hierarchical galaxy formation: the semi-analytical approach (2006, background): “More sophisticated analytic schemes have been devised that can track the loss of mass from the satellites as they move through the dark halo (Taylor & Babul 2001; Benson et al. 2002a; Zentner & Bullock 2003).”
BARYONS MATTER: WHY LUMINOUS SATELLITE GALAXIES HAVE REDUCED CENTRAL MASSES (2012, background): “The tidal effects of a disk are expected to be increasingly stronger as the central density profile of satellites becomes shallower (Taylor & Babul 2001; Stoehr et al. 2002; Hayashi et al. 2003; Read et al. 2006a; Peñarrubia et al. 2010).”
The mass function and average mass-loss rate of dark matter subhaloes (2004, background): “Furthermore, the redshift dependence of the subhalo mass fraction impacts on the survival probability of fragile structures in dark matter haloes, such as tidal streams and/or galactic discs (Taylor & Babul 2001; Tóth & Ostriker 1992).”
Formation and Evolution of Galaxy Dark Matter Halos and Their Substructure (2007, background): “Ts is often assumed to be equal to the satellite orbital time (e.g. Taylor & Babul 2001; Zentner & Bullock 2003) 12.”
Dynamical friction and galaxy merging time-scales (2007, background): “Full dynamical models of the evolution of merging halos – complete with the physics of dynamical friction, tidal stripping, and gravitational shocking – have been created by a number of groups (e.g., Taylor & Babul 2001; Taffoni et al. 2003; Zentner et al. 2005; Gnedin 2003).”
Not so lumpy after all: modelling the depletion of dark matter subhaloes by Milky Way-like galaxies (2017, background): “While the smallest subhalos are likely devoid of baryons, they nonetheless should be dynamically influenced by the central galaxy (Taylor & Babul 2001; Hayashi et al. 2003; Berezinsky et al. 2006; Read et al. 2006a,b; Peñarrubia et al. 2010; D’Onghia et al. 2010).”
Thin, thick and dark discs in ΛCDM (2008, result): “Similar results have been derived previously from semi-analytic models (Taylor & Babul 2001, 2004, 2005; Zentner & Bullock 2003; Zentner et al. 2005).”
Disruption of Dark Matter Substructure: Fact or Fiction? (2017, methodology): “…case one estimates the instantaneous tidal radius by simply using for R and Ω the corresponding, instantaneous values, i.e., Ω = | ®V × ®R|/R2, where ®V is the instantaneous orbital velocity of the subhalo (see e.g., King 1962; Taylor & Babul 2001; Zentner & Bullock 2003; Peñarrubia & Benson 2005).”
Massive black hole seeds from low angular momentum material (2003, background): “Major mergers are quick and have an immediate effect on the growth rate of the spheroid as well as the black hole, while minor mergers take a long time to complete and therefore have a delayed effect that may not materialize in a Hubble time (Taylor & Babul 2001, 2003; Zentner & Bullock 2003).”
Red Galaxy Growth and the Halo Occupation Distribution (2008, background): “Semianalytic models and simulations with rapid growth of massive galaxies may be overestimating the ability of halo mergers to funnel stellar mass into central galaxies (e.g., Taylor & Babul 2001; Benson et al. 2003; Taffoni et al. 2003; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2008).”