Satellites in MW-like hosts: Environment dependence and close pairs

Abstract

Previous studies showed that an estimate of the likelihood distribution of the Milky Way halo mass can be derived using the properties of the satellites similar to the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC). However, it would be straightforward to interpret such an estimate only if the properties of the Magellanic Clouds (MCs) are fairly typical and are not biased by the environment. In this study we explore whether the environment of the Milky Way affects the properties of the SMC and LMC such as their velocities. To test for the effect of the environment, we compare velocity distributions for MC-sized subhalos around Milky Way hosts in a sample selected simply by mass and in the second sample of such halos selected with additional restrictions on the distance to the nearest cluster and the local galaxy density, designed to mimic the environment of the Local Group (LG). We find that satellites in halos in the LG-like environments do have somewhat larger velocities, as compared to the halos of similar mass in the sample without environmental constraints. We derive the host halo likelihood distribution for the samples in the LG-like envirionment and in the control sample and find that the environment does not significantly affect the derived likelihood. We use the updated properties of the SMC and LMC to derive the constraint on the MW halo mass $\log{({\rm M}_{200} /\msol)}=12.06^{+0.31}_{-0.19}$ (90% confidence interval). We also explore the incidence of close pairs with relative velocities and separations similar to those of the LMC and SMC and find that such pairs are quite rare among $\Lambda$CDM halos. Taking into account the close separation of the MCs in the Busha et al.\ 2011 method results in the shift of the MW halo mass estimate to smaller masses, with the peak shifting approximately by a factor of two.[Abridged]

10 pages, 8 figures, Submitted to ApJ

References in corpus (14)

• The Milky Way's Circular Velocity Curve to 60 kpc and an Estimate of the Dark Matter Halo Mass from Kinematics of ~2400 SDSS Blue Horizontal Branch Stars
• The RAVE Survey: Constraining the Local Galactic Escape Speed
• Are the Magellanic Clouds on their First Passage about the Milky Way?
• Third-Epoch Magellanic Cloud Proper Motions I: HST/WFC3 data and Orbit Implications
• Is the SMC Bound to the LMC? The HST Proper Motion of the SMC
• The pseudo-evolution of halo mass
• Kinematics of the stellar halo and the mass distribution of the Milky Way using BHB stars
• Small Dwarf Galaxies Within Larger Dwarfs: Why Some Are Luminous While Most Go Dark
• Dark matter in the Milky Way, II. the HI gas distribution as a tracer of the gravitational potential
• The Mass Profile of the Galaxy to 80 kpc
• The virialized mass of dark matter haloes
• Dynamics of the Magellanic Clouds in a LCDM Universe
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): In Search of Milky-Way Magellanic Cloud Analogues
• A List of Groups of Dwarf Galaxies in the Local Supercluster

Cited by in corpus (35)

• Hunting for the Dark Matter Wake Induced by the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The mass of the Milky Way from satellite dynamics
• The fraction of dark matter within galaxies from the IllustrisTNG simulations
• The mass of our Milky Way
• Orbits of Massive Satellite Galaxies: I. A Close Look at the Large Magellanic Cloud and a New Orbital History for M33
• Estimating the dark matter halo mass of our Milky Way using dynamical tracers
• Satellite galaxies in semi-analytic models of galaxy formation with sterile neutrino dark matter
• The abundance of satellites around Milky Way- and M31-like galaxies with the TNG50 simulation: a matter of diversity
• Milky Way mass constraints from the Galactic satellite gap
• The Dynamics of Galaxy Pairs in a Cosmological Setting
• On the mass of the Local Group
• Addressing the too big to fail problem with baryon physics and sterile neutrino dark matter
• The Frequency of Dwarf Galaxy Multiples at Low Redshift in SDSS vs. Cosmological Expectations
• Quantifying the Stellar Halo's Response to the LMC's Infall with Spherical Harmonics
• Estimating the Mass of the Milky Way Using the Ensemble of Classical Satellite Galaxies
• Orbits of massive satellite galaxies: II. Bayesian Estimates of the Milky Way and Andromeda masses using high precision astrometry and cosmological simulations
• The Mass Profile of the Milky Way to the Virial Radius from the Illustris Simulation
• The VMC survey -- XLI. Stellar proper motions within the Small Magellanic Cloud
• A comparative study of satellite galaxies in Milky Way-like galaxies from HSC, DECaLS and SDSS
• Constraining the mass of the Local Group
• The importance of preventive feedback: inference from observations of the stellar masses and metallicities of Milky Way dwarf galaxies
• Effects of the environment on galaxies in the Catalogue of Isolated Galaxies: physical satellites and large scale structure
• On the nature of a shell of young stars in the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The connection between the host halo and the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way
• Evidence for a Massive Andromeda Galaxy Using Satellite Galaxy Proper Motions
• A first estimate of the Milky Way dark matter halo spin
• Subhalo accretion through filaments
• The Local Group in the cosmic web
• What to expect from dynamical modelling of galactic haloes
• Faint Dwarfs in Nearby Groups
• Investigating the Baryon Cycle in Interacting Dwarfs with the Very Large Array and Pan-STARRS
• Stellar Populations in a semi-analytic model I: bulges of Milky Way-like galaxies
• Line-of-sight mass estimator and the masses of the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy
• Cosmological Simulations of Satellites around Isolated Dwarf Galaxies
• The orbital dynamics of the LMC and SMC about the Milky Way