Dwarf Galaxy Clustering and Missing Satellites

TL;DR

This study measures the clustering of dwarf galaxies and compares observed satellite counts with LCDM predictions, revealing fewer satellites than expected and suggesting complex star formation histories.

Contribution

It provides new empirical measurements of dwarf galaxy clustering and satellite abundance, highlighting discrepancies with LCDM simulations and implications for galaxy formation models.

Findings

Dwarf galaxy auto-correlation length increases with mass.

Number of dwarfs per galaxy is about twice the Milky Way count.

Observed dwarf counts are 30 times lower than LCDM predictions.

Abstract

At redshifts around 0.1 the CFHT Legacy Survey Deep fields contain some 6x10^4 galaxies spanning the mass range from 10^5 to 10^12 Msun. We measure the stellar mass dependence of the two point correlation using angular measurements to largely bypass the errors, approximately 0.02 in the median, of the photometric redshifts. Inverting the power-law fits with Limber's equation we find that the auto-correlation length increases from a very low 0.4hMpc at 10^5.5 Msun to the conventional 4.5hMpc at 10^10.5 Msun. The power law fit to the correlation function has a slope which increases from gamma approximately 1.6 at high mass to gamma approximately 2.3 at low mass. The spatial cross-correlation of dwarf galaxies with more massive galaxies shows fairly similar trends, with a steeper radial dependence at low mass than predicted in numerical simulations of sub-halos within galaxy halos. To examine the issue of missing satellites we combine the cross-correlation measurements with our estimates of the low mass galaxy number density. We find on the average there are 60+/-20 dwarfs in sub-halos with M(total) > 10^7 Msun for a typical Local Group M(total)/M(stars)=30, corresponding to M/L_V approximately 100 for a galaxy with no recent star formation. The number of dwarfs per galaxy is about a factor of two larger than currently found for the Milky Way. Nevertheless, the average dwarf counts are about a factor of 30 below LCDM simulation results. The divergence from LCDM predictions is one of slope of the relation, approximately dN/dlnM approximately -0.5 rather than the predicted -0.9, not sudden onset at some characteristic scale. The dwarf galaxy star formation rates span the range from passive to bursting, which suggests that there are few completely dark halos.