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Renegade subhaloes in the Local Group
- Source :
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. 417:L56-L60
- Publication Year :
- 2011
- Publisher :
- Oxford University Press (OUP), 2011.
-
Abstract
- Using a dark matter only Constrained Local UniversE Simulation (CLUES) we examine the existence of subhaloes that change their affiliation from one of the two prominent hosts in the Local Group (i.e. the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy) to the other, and call these objects "renegade subhaloes". In light of recent claims that the two Magellanic Clouds (MCs) may have originated from another region (or even the outskirts) of the Local Group or that they have been spawned by a major merger in the past of the Andromeda galaxy, we investigate the nature of such events. However, we cannot confirm that renegade subhaloes enter as deep into the potential well of their present host nor that they share the most simplest properties with the MCs, namely mass and relative velocity. Our simulation rather suggests that these renegade subhaloes appear to be flying past one host before being pulled into the other. A merger is not required to trigger such an event, it is rather the distinct environment of our simulated Local Group facilitating such behavior. Since just a small fraction of the full z=0 subhalo population are renegades, our study indicates that it will be intrinsically difficult to distinguish them despite clear differences in their velocity, radial distribution, shape and spin parameter distributions.
- Subjects :
- Physics
education.field_of_study
Andromeda Galaxy
010308 nuclear & particles physics
media_common.quotation_subject
Event (relativity)
Milky Way
Dark matter
Population
Local Group
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Radial distribution
Astrophysics
01 natural sciences
Universe
Space and Planetary Science
0103 physical sciences
education
010303 astronomy & astrophysics
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 17453925
- Volume :
- 417
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........c45b5243f993f8a3c00e5295c6194454
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3933.2011.01119.x