Cold Dark Matter Substructure and Galactic Disks

TL;DR

High-resolution N-body simulations reveal that cold dark matter subhalos frequently interact with galactic disks, causing thickening and distinctive features, which may explain observed structures like the Monoceros ring.

Contribution

This study combines cosmological and controlled simulations to demonstrate the impact of CDM substructure on galactic disk morphology and evolution, providing new insights into galaxy formation.

Findings

Disk thickening exceeds a factor of 2 due to subhalo impacts.

Interactions produce observable features like flares, bars, and rings.

Simulated ring-like structures match the Monoceros ring in the Milky Way.

Abstract

We perform a set of high-resolution, dissipationless N-body simulations to investigate the influence of cold dark matter (CDM) substructure on the dynamical evolution of thin galactic disks. Our method combines cosmological simulations of galaxy-sized CDM halos to derive the properties of substructure populations and controlled numerical experiments of consecutive subhalo impacts onto initially-thin, fully-formed disk galaxies. We demonstrate that close encounters between massive subhalos and galactic disks since z~1 should be common occurrences in LCDM models. In contrast, extremely few satellites in present-day CDM halos are likely to have a significant impact on the disk structure. One typical host halo merger history is used to seed controlled N-body experiments of subhalo-disk encounters. As a result of these accretion events, the disk thickens considerably at all radii with the disk scale height increasing in excess of a factor of 2 in the solar neighborhood. We show that interactions with the subhalo population produce a wealth of distinctive morphological signatures in the disk stars including: conspicuous flares; bars; low-lived, ring-like features in the outskirts; and low-density, filamentary structures above the disk plane. We compare a resulting dynamically-cold, ring-like feature in our simulations to the Monoceros ring stellar structure in the MW. The comparison shows quantitative agreement in both spatial distribution and kinematics, suggesting that such observed complex stellar components may arise naturally as disk stars are excited by encounters with subhalos. These findings highlight the significant role of CDM substructure in setting the structure of disk galaxies and driving galaxy evolution.