Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21823401a&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #234.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We use a LCDM simulation to study the locations and motions of satellite galaxies relative to their host galaxies. We concentrate on relatively isolated hosts, selected for being the brightest galaxies in their region of space, and we use the smaller, fainter satellites found around the hosts to probe the hosts' dark matter halos.
A single observed host galaxy has too few satellites for those satellites to provide, on their own, a reliable probe of the dark matter halo of that particular host. However, a large number of hosts can be collected from a redshift survey such as the SDSS, which makes it possible to compute host-satellite ensemble averages. This allows us to measure the mean velocity field around the hosts and to study the shape of the velocity distribution in order to infer the corresponding velocity dispersion.
Here we evaluate the biases that occur when it is assumed that the satellites are fair tracers of the dark matter halos of the host galaxies. In particular, our study highlights the fact that, in order to use satellite galaxies as accurate probes of the halos around the host galaxies, the hosts need to be in a reasonably relaxed state and the satellites need to have reached some level of equilibrium with the halo they are to measure.
Utilizing simulations in this way is extremely useful in suggesting models and hypotheses for further exploration in observations. This knowledge is necessary to be able to interpret observations of hosts and satellites, and to then infer the properties of the underlying dark matter structure.
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
Agustsson Ingolfur
Brainerd Tereasa G.
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