Redefining the Missing Satellites Problem

By L. Strigari, James S. Bullock, M. Kaplinghat, J. Diemand, Michael Kuhlen, P. Madau. 2007

206 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Numerical simulations of Milky Way-size cold dark matter (CDM) halos predict a steeply rising mass function of small dark matter subhalos and a substructure count that greatly outnumbers the observed satellites of the Milky Way. Several proposed explanations exist, but detailed comparison between theory and observation in terms of the maximum circular velocity (Vmax) of the subhalos is hampered by the fact that Vmax for satellite halos is poorly constrained. We present comprehensive mass models for the well-known Milky Way dwarf satellites and derive likelihood functions to show that their masses within 0.6 kpc (M0.6) are strongly constrained by the present data. We show that the M0.6 mass function of luminous satellite halos is flat between ~107 and 108 M☉. We use the "Via Lactea" N-body simulation to show that the M0.6 mass function of CDM subhalos is steeply rising over this range. We rule out the hypothesis that the 11 well-known satellites of the Milky Way are hosted by the 11 most massive subhalos. We show that models where the brightest satellites correspond to the earliest forming subhalos or the most massive accreted objects both reproduce the observed mass function. A similar analysis with the newly discovered dwarf satellites will further test these scenarios and provide powerful constraints on the CDM small-scale power spectrum and warm dark matter models.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f89999f9443e1996ff184017440088ec1aeba3b1

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Citations in the corpus

Dark matter cores and cusps: the case of multiple stellar populations in dwarf spheroidals (2011, result): “The points displayed in the upper panel show how our results compare with previous mass measures for Sculptor by Strigari et al. (2007, 2008), Walker et al. (2009) and Amorisco & Evans (2011).”
Galactic stellar haloes in the CDM model (2009, background): “These simulations can resolve structures down to ∼106 M , comparable to the least massive dark halo hosts inferred for Milky Way satellites (e.g. Strigari et al. 2007; Walker et al. 2009).”
Small scale problems of the $\Lambda$CDM model: a short review (2016, methodology): “The shape of satellites inner densities, shifting from cuspy to cored [73,74] (hereafter Z12 and B13 respectively) , thus making them more susceptible to tidal stripping and even to tidal destruction [77,374].”
Accurate masses for dispersion-supported galaxies (2009, background): “…radii for various commonly-used surface density profiles are provided in Appendix B. 7 A similar effect was discussed but not fully explored in Strigari et al. (2007b). c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 3.2.1 Existence of a radius req where the mass profile is minimally affected by…”
The Aquarius Project: the subhaloes of galactic haloes (2008, background): “The density profile of subhalos also determines the kinematics of the stars in satellite galaxies, which are observationally accessible for the dwarf spheroidals around the Milky Way (e.g. Stoehr et al., 2002; Strigari et al., 2007a).”
THE VELOCITY WIDTH FUNCTION OF GALAXIES FROM THE 40% ALFALFA SURVEY: SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE COLD DARK MATTER OVERABUNDANCE PROBLEM (2011, background): “…has led to a number of observational challenges, such as the “missing satellites problem” (Klypin et al. 1999; Moore et al. 1999; Diemand et al. 2007; Strigari et al. 2007; Simon & Geha 2007), the “void phenomenon” (Peebles 2001; Tinker & Conroy 2009), as well as the discrepancy between the sizes…”
A METHOD FOR MEASURING (SLOPES OF) THE MASS PROFILES OF DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXIES (2011, background): “…despite this well-known degeneracy between mass and anisotropy, the various successful Jeans models tend to have the same mass enclosed within approximately the dSph halflight radius (e.g., Strigari et al. 2007; Peñarrubia et al. 2008a; Walker et al. 2009a; Wolf et al. 2010; Amorisco & Evans 2011).”
Constraining self-interacting dark matter with the Milky Way’s dwarf spheroidals (2012, background): “However, the uncertainty in mass that is due to this degeneracy is minimised near the half-light radius, where Jeans models tend to give the same value of enclosed mass regardless of anisotropy (e.g. Strigari et al. 2007; Walker et al. 2009; Wolf et al. 2010).”
Small Dwarf Galaxies within Larger Dwarfs: Why Some Are Luminous while Most Go Dark (2008, background): “…the power spectrum on small scales (e.g. Zentner & Bullock 2003, and references therein) and changing the nature of the dark matter, by assuming a warm dark matter particle (e.g. Colin et al. 2000; Avila-Reese et al. 2001) or by invoking decay from a nonrelativistic particle (Strigari et al. 2007).”
Dark Matter Subhalos and the Dwarf Satellites of the Milky Way (2008, methodology): “…to be inhibited in all subhalos with 5 Note that the same is not true for the top 10 LBA subhalos (Kravtsov et al. 2004; Diemand et al. 2007b; Strigari et al. 2007a), as the largest Vmax,p systems suffer the largest mass loss and are removed from the top ten list of more massive systems at z…”
BARYONS MATTER: WHY LUMINOUS SATELLITE GALAXIES HAVE REDUCED CENTRAL MASSES (2012, background): “…fully reconcile observations with CDM-based models, and alternative cosmological models (e.g., warm or self-interacting dark matter) have also been proposed to explain observations (Alam et al. 2002; Strigari et al. 2007b; Lovell et al. 2012; Vogelsberger et al. 2012; van den Aarssen et al. 2012).”
Cosmology and Fundamental Physics with the Euclid Satellite (2012, unknown): “2009): ‘the missing-satellite problem’ (Kauffmann et al. 1993; Klypin et al. 1999; Strigari et al. 2007; Bullock 2010), the ‘cusp-core problem’ (Li and Chen 2009; Simon et al.”
Subhaloes in self-interacting galactic dark matter haloes (2012, background): “Models that successfully reproduce the observed data tend to have roughly the same value of the enclosed mass within the half-light radius (e.g. Strigari et al. 2007; Peñarrubia et al. 2008; Walker et al. 2009; Wolf et al. 2010).”
THE GHOSTS SURVEY. I. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE ADVANCED CAMERA FOR SURVEYS DATA (2011, background): “This “missing satellite” problem has sparked much debate as it places strong constraints on the nature of dark matter (e.g., Zentner & Bullock 2003; Strigari et al. 2007; Polisensky & Ricotti 2011) as well as the behavior of baryons in dark-matter potentials (e.g., Bullock et al. 2000; Ricotti &…”
THE SPLASH SURVEY: SPECTROSCOPY OF 15 M31 DWARF SPHEROIDAL SATELLITE GALAXIES (2011, background): “The missing satellite problem noted above is the classic example, for which a variety of solutions have surfaced (e.g, Bullock et al. 2000; Strigari et al. 2007; Tollerud et al. 2008; Bovill & Ricotti 2009; Koposov et al. 2009; Kravtsov 2010).”
Sweating the small stuff: simulating dwarf galaxies, ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, and their own tiny satellites (2015, background): “…in the smallest dark matter halos, suggesting a threshold in halo mass below which all halos remain dark (Efstathiou 1992; Somerville 2002; Benson et al. 2002b; Kravtsov, Gnedin & Klypin 2004; Ricotti & Gnedin 2005; Moore et al. 2006; Strigari et al. 2007; Simon & Geha 2007; Madau et al. 2008).”