Co-orbiting planes of sub-halos are similarly unlikely around paired and isolated hosts

TL;DR

This study investigates whether the environment of host galaxies influences the formation of flattened, co-orbiting satellite planes, finding no significant difference between paired and isolated hosts in cosmological simulations.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic comparison of satellite plane properties around paired and isolated hosts in cosmological simulations, showing environment has little effect.

Findings

No significant difference in satellite plane properties between paired and isolated hosts.

Very few simulated systems reproduce observed satellite plane characteristics.

Galaxy pairing does not explain the existence of the Milky Way's satellite plane.

Abstract

Sub-halos in dark-matter-based cosmological simulations tend to be distributed approximately isotropically around their host. The existence of highly flattened, co-orbiting planes of satellite galaxies has therefore been identified as a possible problem for these cosmological models, but so far studies have not considered the hosts' environments. That satellite planes are now known around both major galaxies in the Local Group raises the question whether they are more likely around paired hosts. In a first attempt to investigate this possibility we focus on the flattening and orbital coherence of the 11 brightest satellite galaxies of the vast polar structure (VPOS) around the Milky Way (MW). We search for VPOS analogs in the ELVIS suite of cosmological simulations, which consist of 24 paired and 24 isolated host halos. We do not find significant differences between the properties of sub-halo distributions around paired and isolated hosts. The observed flattening and the observed orbital alignment are each reproduced by only 0.2 to 2 per cent of paired and isolated systems incorporating the obscuration of satellites by randomly oriented galactic discs. Only one of all 4800 analyzed realizations (0.02 per cent) reproduces both parameters simultaneously, but the average orbital pole of this sub-halo system does not align as well with the normal to the plane fit as observed. That the MW is part of a galaxy pair thus does not help in explaining the existence of the VPOS if the satellite galaxies are identified with sub-halos found in dissipationless simulations.