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Renegade subhaloes in the Local Group

Authors :
Stefan Gottloeber
Gustavo Yepes
Timur Doumler
Alexander Knebe
Yehuda Hoffman
Noam I. Libeskind
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.

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