Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Galaxy Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2012-03-19
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Galaxy Astrophysics
7 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRAS
Scientific paper
Recent studies suggest that only three of the twelve brightest satellites of the Milky Way (MW) inhabit dark matter halos with maximum circular velocity, V_max, exceeding ~30 km/s. This is in apparent contradiction with the LCDM simulations of the Aquarius Project, which suggest that MW-sized halos should have at least 8 subhalos with V_max>30 km/s. The absence of luminous satellites in such massive subhalos is thus puzzling and may present a challenge to the LCDM paradigm. We note, however, that the number of massive subhalos depends strongly on the (poorly-known) virial mass of the Milky Way, and that their scarcity makes estimates of their abundance from a small simulation set like Aquarius uncertain. We use the Millennium Simulation series and the invariance of the scaled subhalo velocity function (i.e., the number of subhalos as a function of \nu, the ratio of subhalo V_max to host halo virial velocity, V_200) to secure improved estimates of the abundance of rare massive subsystems. In the range 0.1<\nu<0.5, N_sub(>\nu) is Poisson-distributed about an average given by
Frenk Carlos S.
Gao Liang
Navarro Julio F.
Wang Jie
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