No Arabic abstract
We calculate the probability that a Milky-Way-like halo in the standard cosmological model has the observed number of Magellanic Clouds (MCs). The statistics of the number of MCs in the LCDM model are in good agreement with observations of a large sample of SDSS galaxies. Under the sub-halo abundance matching assumption of a relationship with small scatter between galaxy r-band luminosities and halo internal velocities v_max, we make detailed comparisons to similar measurements using SDSS DR7 data by Liu et al. (2010). Models and observational data give very similar probabilities for having zero, one, and two MC-like satellites. In both cases, Milky Way-luminosity hosts have just a sim 10% chance of hosting two satellites similar to the Magellanic Clouds. In addition, we present a prediction for the probability for a host galaxy to have Nsats satellite galaxies as a function of the magnitudes of both the host and satellite. This probability and its scaling with host properties is significantly different from that of mass-selected objects because of scatter in the mass- luminosity relation and because of variations in the star formation efficiency with halo mass.
We perform a comprehensive study of Milky Way (MW) satellite galaxies to constrain the fundamental properties of dark matter (DM). This analysis fully incorporates inhomogeneities in the spatial distribution and detectability of MW satellites and marginalizes over uncertainties in the mapping between galaxies and DM halos, the properties of the MW system, and the disruption of subhalos by the MW disk. Our results are consistent with the cold, collisionless DM paradigm and yield the strongest cosmological constraints to date on particle models of warm, interacting, and fuzzy dark matter. At $95%$ confidence, we report limits on (i) the mass of thermal relic warm DM, $m_{rm WDM} > 6.5 mathrm{keV}$ (free-streaming length, $lambda_{rm{fs}} lesssim 10,h^{-1} mathrm{kpc}$), (ii) the velocity-independent DM-proton scattering cross section, $sigma_{0} < 8.8times 10^{-29} mathrm{cm}^{2}$ for a $100 mathrm{MeV}$ DM particle mass (DM-proton coupling, $c_p lesssim (0.3 mathrm{GeV})^{-2}$), and (iii) the mass of fuzzy DM, $m_{phi}> 2.9 times 10^{-21} mathrm{eV}$ (de Broglie wavelength, $lambda_{rm{dB}} lesssim 0.5 mathrm{kpc}$). These constraints are complementary to other observational and laboratory constraints on DM properties.
Within the Cold Dark Matter scenario the hierarchical merging paradigm is the natural result to form massive galactic halos by the minor mergers of sub-halos and, by this, inherently their stellar halo. Although this must be also invoked for the Milky Way, the context of chemical and kinematic coherence of halo stars and dwarf spheroidal galaxies is yet unsolved a focus of present-day research. To examine this issue we model the chemo-dynamical evolution of the system of satellites selected from the cosmological Via Lactea II simulations to be similar for the Milky Way environment but at an early epoch.
We present the Stage II results from the ongoing Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) Survey. Upon completion, the SAGA Survey will spectroscopically identify satellite galaxies brighter than $ M_{r,o} = -12.3 $ around 100 Milky Way (MW) analogs at $ z sim 0.01 $. In Stage II, we have more than quadrupled the sample size of Stage I, delivering results from 127 satellites around 36 MW analogs with an improved target selection strategy and deep photometric imaging catalogs from the Dark Energy Survey and the Legacy Surveys. We have obtained 25,372 galaxy redshifts, peaking around $ z = 0.2 $. These data significantly increase spectroscopic coverage for very low redshift objects in $ 17 < r_o < 20.75 $ around SAGA hosts, creating a unique data set that places the Local Group in a wider context. The number of confirmed satellites per system ranges from zero to nine, and correlates with host galaxy and brightest satellite luminosities. We find that the number and the luminosities of MW satellites are consistent with being drawn from the same underlying distribution as SAGA systems. The majority of confirmed SAGA satellites are star forming, and the quenched fraction increases as satellite stellar mass and projected radius from the host galaxy decrease. Overall, the satellite quenched fraction among SAGA systems is lower than that in the Local Group. We compare the luminosity functions and radial distributions of SAGA satellites with theoretical predictions based on cold dark matter simulations and an empirical galaxy-halo connection model and find that the results are broadly in agreement.
We follow the structural evolution of star forming galaxies (SFGs) like the Milky Way by selecting progenitors to z~1.3 based on the stellar mass growth inferred from the evolution of the star forming sequence. We select our sample from the 3D-HST survey, which utilizes spectroscopy from the HST WFC3 G141 near-IR grism and enables precise redshift measurements for our sample of SFGs. Structural properties are obtained from Sersic profile fits to CANDELS WFC3 imaging. The progenitors of z=0 SFGs with stellar mass M=10^{10.5} Msun are typically half as massive at z~1. This late-time stellar mass assembly is consistent with recent studies that employ abundance matching techniques. The descendant SFGs at z~0 have grown in half-light radius by a factor of ~1.4 since z~1. The half-light radius grows with stellar mass as r_e M^{0.29}. While most of the stellar mass is clearly assembling at large radii, the mass surface density profiles reveal ongoing mass growth also in the central regions where bulges and pseudobulges are common features in present day late-type galaxies. Some portion of this growth in the central regions is due to star formation as recent observations of H-alpha maps for SFGs at z~1 are found to be extended but centrally peaked. Connecting our lookback study with galactic archeology, we find the stellar mass surface density at R=8 kpc to have increased by a factor of ~2 since z~1, in good agreement with measurements derived for the solar neighborhood of the Milky Way.
We use the distribution of maximum circular velocities, $V_{max}$, of satellites in the Milky Way (MW) to constrain the virial mass, $M_{200}$, of the Galactic halo under an assumed prior of a $Lambda$CDM universe. This is done by analysing the subhalo populations of a large sample of halos found in the Millennium II cosmological simulation. The observation that the MW has at most three subhalos with $V_{max}ge30 km/s$ requires a halo mass $M_{200}le1.4times10^{12} M_odot$, while the existence of the Magellanic Clouds (assumed to have $V_{max}ge60 km/s$) requires $M_{200}ge1.0times10^{12} M_odot$. The first of these conditions is necessary to avoid the too-big-to-fail problem highlighted by Boylan-Kolchin et al., while the second stems from the observation that massive satellites like the Magellanic Clouds are rare. When combining both requirements, we find that the MW halo mass must lie in the range $0.25 le M_{200}/(10^{12} M_odot) le 1.4$ at $90%$ confidence. The gap in the abundance of Galactic satellites between $30 km/sle V_{max} le 60 km/s$ places our galaxy in the tail of the expected satellite distribution.