2007/03/31 by Juerg Diemand, Jurg Diemand, Michael Kuhlen +1 · 576 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Dark matter #Dark matter halo #Dwarf galaxy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Halo #Milky Way #Substructure #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/520573
published in The Astrophysical Journal 667(2), 859-877 (IOP Publishing) · 20 pages, 18 figures. Figures 6,7 and 8 corrected in this version, for details see the erratum in ApJ 679, 1680 and http://www.ucolick.org/~diemand/vl/publ/vlevolerr.pdf. Data, movies and images are available at http://www.ucolick.org/~diemand/vl/
openalex publication_date 2007/10/01 · arxiv created 2008/05/13 · arxiv updated 2010/11/11 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/08
We use the "Via Lactea" simulation to study the co-evolution of a Milky Way-sized ΛCDM halo and its subhalo population. While most of the host halo mass is accreted over the first 6 Gyr in a series of major mergers, the physical mass distribution [not M vir ( z )] remains practically constant since z = 1. The same is true in a large sample of ΛCDM galaxy halos. Subhalo mass loss peaks between the turnaround and virialization epochs of a given mass shell, and the abundance of substructure within the shell freezes afterward. Of the z = 1 subhalos, 97% have a surviving bound remnant at the present epoch. The retained mass fraction is larger for initially lighter subhalos: today satellites with maximum circular velocities V max = 10 km s -1 at z = 1 have about 40% of the mass they had back then. At the first pericenter passage a larger average mass fraction is lost than during each following orbit. Tides remove mass in the substructure from the outside in, leading to higher concentrations compared to field halos of the same mass. This effect, combined with the earlier formation epoch of the inner satellites, results in strongly increasing subhalo concentrations toward the Galactic center. We present individual evolutionary tracks and present-day properties of the likely hosts of the dwarf satellites around the Milky Way. The formation histories of "field halos" that lie beyond the Via Lactea host today are found to strongly depend on the density of their environment. This is caused by tidal mass loss that affects many field halos on eccentric orbits.