Masses for the Local Group and the Milky Way

By Yang-Shyang Li, S. Institute, M. F. Astrophysik. 2007

204 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use the very large Millennium Simulation of the concordance Lambda cold dark matter cosmogony to calibrate the bias and error distribution of Timing Argument estimators of the masses of the Local Group and of the Milky Way. From a large number of isolated spiral spiral pairs similar to the Milky Way/Andromeda system, we find the interquartile range of the ratio of timing mass to true mass to be a factor of 1.8, while the 5 and 95 per cent points of the distribution of this ratio are separated by a factor of 5.7. Here, we define true mass as the sum of the `virial' masses, M(200), of the two dominant galaxies. For present best values of the distance and approach velocity of Andromeda, this leads to a median likelihood estimate of the true mass of the Local Group of 5.27 x 10(12) M(circle dot) or M(LG)/M(circle dot) = 12.72, with an interquartile range of [12.58, 12.83] and a 5-95 per cent range of [12.26, 13.01]. Thus, a 95 per cent lower confidence limit on the true mass of the Local Group is 1.81 x 10(12) M(circle dot). A timing estimate of the Milky Way's mass based on the large recession velocity observed for the distant satellite Leo I works equally well, although with larger systematic uncertainties. It gives an estimated virial mass for the Milky Way of 2.43 x 10(12) M(circle dot) with a 95 per cent lower confidence limit of 0.80 x 10(12) M(circle dot).

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5b478d88ecb3e8e5b44b52f8502c9c803c235362

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Citations in the corpus

THIRD-EPOCH MAGELLANIC CLOUD PROPER MOTIONS. I. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE/WFC3 DATA AND ORBIT IMPLICATIONS (2013, methodology): “We can also make a more general timing argument based on the fact that the Clouds and the MW must have been in close proximity at the time of the Big Bang (in analogy with similar arguments for e.g., M31 and Leo I (Li & White 2008)).”
The environmental history of group and cluster galaxies in a Λ cold dark matter universe (2011, background): “The evolution of the parent halo 2 Note that the Local Group, with an estimated mass of 5 × 1012 M⊙ (Li & White 2008), would not be classified as a group according to this definition. c© 2011 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–17 masses (solid lines) shows clearly that more massive galaxies are sitting on average…”
The kinematic connection between galaxies and dark matter haloes (2010, methodology): “Li & White (2008) use a cosmological N-body simulation to calibrate the bias and error distribution of the Timing Argument estimators of the masses of the Local Group.”
The RAVE survey : the Galactic escape speed and the mass of the Milky Way (2013, methodology): “…Deason et al. 2012; Bovy et al. 2012), while methods exploiting the kinematics of satellite galaxies or statistics of large cosmological dark matter simulations find higher values (Wilkinson & Evans 1999; Li & White 2008; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2011; Busha et al. 2011; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2013).”
The Masses of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies (2010, methodology): “Data for the satellites of the Milky Way and M31 are given in Tables 1 and 2, respectively.”
The missing massive satellites of the Milky Way (2012, background): “This is well within the range of halo masses allowed by the latest estimates based on either the timing argument (Li & White 2008) or on abundancematching methods (Guo et al. 2010).”
DO HOT HALOS AROUND GALAXIES CONTAIN THE MISSING BARYONS? (2010, background): “The consensus figure is roughly 2.5 × 1012 M (Sakamoto et al. 2003; Bellazzini 2004; Loeb et al. 2005; Li & White 2008), although a recent estimate was as low as 1.0+0.3−0.2 × 1012 M (Xue et al. 2008) while another (Reid et al. 2009) revised upward the circular velocity by about 15 km s−1, which…”
The Aquila comparison project: the effects of feedback and numerical methods on simulations of galaxy formation (2011, methodology): “The selected halo, Aq-C, has a present-day mass similar to the Milky Way (∼1.6 × 1012 M ; e.g. Dehnen, McLaughlin & Sachania 2006; Smith et al. 2007; Li & White 2008; Xue et al. 2008; Watkins, Evans & An 2010) and has a relatively quiet formation history.”
Galactic stellar haloes in the CDM model (2009, methodology): “Aquarius (Springel et al. 2008a) is a suite of high-resolution simulations of six DM haloes having masses within the range 1−2 × 1012 M , comparable to values typically inferred for the Milky Way halo (e.g. Battaglia et al. 2005; Smith et al. 2007; Li & White 2008; Xue et al. 2008).”
Constraining the Galaxy's dark halo with RAVE stars (2014, background): “…founded on numerous lines of evidence, but two important and essentially independent ones are the dynamics of the Local Group (Kahn & Woltjer 1959; Li & White 2008) and fits of CDM cosmologies to the cosmic background radiation combined with numerical simulations of galaxy formation (e.g. Bower…”
KINEMATICS OF THE STELLAR HALO AND THE MASS DISTRIBUTION OF THE MILKY WAY USING BLUE HORIZONTAL BRANCH STARS (2012, background): “…evolution of the Magellanic clouds (Lin & Lynden-Bell 1982; Besla et al. 2007), the local escape speed (Smith et al. 2007), the timing argument (Li & White 2008) and the study of the kinematic of the tracers population (Kochanek 1996; Xue et al. 2008; Gnedin et al. 2010; Watkins et al. 2010)…”
ELVIS: Exploring the Local Volume in Simulations (2013, unknown): “…host: 1012 ≤Mv ≤ 3× 1012M (Tollerud et al. 2012; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2013; Fardal et al. 2013; Piffl et al. 2013) • Total mass: 2× 1012 ≤Mv,1 +Mv,2 ≤ 5× 1012M (Li & White 2008; van der Marel et al. 2012) • Separation: 0.6 ≤ ∆R ≤ 1 Mpc (McConnachie et al. 2005, and references therein) • Radial…”
The APOSTLE project: Local Group kinematic mass constraints and simulation candidate selection (2015, background): “Assuming that the age of the Universe is known, that the orbit is strictly radial, and that the pair is on first approach, this argument leads to a robust and unbiased estimate of the total mass of the system (Li & White 2008).”
The milky way total mass profile as inferred from Gaia DR2 (2019, background): “…2017; Deason et al. 2019b), the orbits of tidal streams (e.g. Gibbons et al. 2014; Bowden et al. 2015), the luminosity function of the MW satellites (e.g. Busha et al. 2011; Cautun et al. 2014b) and the dynamics of the Local Group (e.g. Li & White 2008; Diaz et al. 2014; Peñarrubia et al. 2016).”
THE SPACE MOTION OF LEO I: THE MASS OF THE MILKY WAY'S DARK MATTER HALO (2012, methodology): “…based on the Leo I timing argument, this bestestimate value and range are similar to Zaritsky et al. (1989) and lower than, but consistent with, Li & White (2008) and Sohn et al. (2013). van der Marel et al. (2012b) have computed Mvir,MW based on the timing argument for the MW–M31 pair and…”
The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic, and Integrated Properties (2016, background): “Timing mass estimates in early work (e.g., Li & White 2008) are now thought to be consistently too high.”
MINOR MERGERS AND THE SIZE EVOLUTION OF ELLIPTICAL GALAXIES (2009, result): “The ratio of central stellar mass to halo mass is about a factor of two larger than predicted from gravitational lensing studies (Mandelbaum et al. 2006), however, it is comparable to some recent predictions derived for the Milky Way halo ( e.g. Xue et al. 2008, see however Li & White 2008).”