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Several authors have found a statistically significant excess of galaxies with higher redshifts relative to the group centre, so-called discordant redshifts, in particular in groups where the brightest galaxy, identified in apparent magnitudes, is a spiral. Our aim is to explain the observed redshift excess. We use a semi-analytical galaxy catalogue constructed from the Millennium Simulation to study redshift asymmetries in spiral-dominated groups in the Lambda cold dark matter (LambdaCDM) cosmology. We show that discordant redshifts in small galaxy groups arise when these groups are gravitationally unbound and the dominant galaxy of the group is misidentified. The redshift excess is especially significant when the apparently brightest galaxy can be identified as a spiral, in full agreement with observations. On the other hand, the groups that are gravitationally bound do not show a significant redshift asymmetry. When the dominant members of groups in mock catalogues are identified by using the absolute B-band magnitudes, our results show a small blueshift excess. This result is due to the magnitude limited observations that miss the faint background galaxies in groups. When the group centre is not correctly identified it may cause the major part of the observed redshift excess. If the group is also gravitationally unbound, the level of the redshift excess becomes as high as in observations. There is no need to introduce any "anomalous" redshift mechanism to explain the observed redshift excess. Further, as the Friends-of-Friends percolation algorithm picks out the expanding parts of groups, in addition to the gravitationally bound group cores, group catalogues constructed in this way cannot be used as if the groups are purely bound systems., Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A

We have compared numerical simulations to observations for the nearby (< 40 Mpc) groups of galaxies (Huchra & Geller 1982 and Ramella et al. 2002). The group identification is carried out using a group-finding algorithm developed by Huchra and Geller (1982). Using cosmological N-body simulation code with the LambdaCDM cosmology, we show that the dynamical properties of groups of galaxies identified from the simulation data are, in general, in a moderate, within 2sigma, agreement with the observational catalogues of groups of galaxies. As simulations offer more dynamical information than observations, we used the N-body simulation data to calculate whether the nearby groups of galaxies are gravitationally bound objects by using their virial ratio. We show that in a LambdaCDM cosmology about 20 per cent of nearby groups of galaxies, identified by the same algorithm as in the case of observations, are not bound, but merely groups in a visual sense. This is quite significant, specifically because estimations of group masses in observations are often based on an assumption that groups of galaxies found by the friends-of-friends algorithm are gravitationally bound objects. Simulations with different resolutions show the same results. We also show how the fraction of gravitationally unbound groups varies when the apparent magnitude limit of the sample and the value of the cosmological constant is changed. In general, a larger value of the Omega_Lambda generates slightly more unbound groups., Comment: 13 figures and 7 tables, Accepted 2007 September 19. Received 2007 September 19; in original form 2007 April 2