Detection of the velocity shear effect on the spatial distributions of the galactic satellites in isolated systems

TL;DR

This study detects a correlation between the large-scale velocity shear field and the spatial distribution of galactic satellites around isolated galaxies, revealing preferential alignments along shear axes.

Contribution

It provides observational evidence linking velocity shear to satellite galaxy distribution, a connection previously suggested mainly by simulations.

Findings

Satellites align with the minor principal axes of the shear field.

Alignment strength varies with satellite type and host properties.

The effect appears insensitive to cosmic web environment and host luminosity.

Abstract

We report a detection of the effect of the large-scale velocity shear on the spatial distributions of the galactic satellites around the isolated hosts. Identifying the isolated galactic systems each of which consists of a single host galaxy and its satellites from the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and reconstructing linearly the velocity shear field in the local universe, we measure the alignments between the relative positions of the satellites from their isolated hosts and the principal axes of the local velocity shear tensors projected on to the plane of sky. We find a clear signal that the galactic satellites in isolated systems are located preferentially along the directions of the minor principal axes of the large-scale velocity shear field. Those galactic satellites which are spirals, brighter, located at distances larger than the projected virial radii of the hosts and belonging to the spiral hosts yield stronger alignment signals, which implies that the alignment strength depends on the formation and accretion epochs of the galactic satellites. It is also shown that the alignment strength is quite insensitive to the cosmic web environment as well as the size and luminosity of the isolated hosts. Although this result is consistent with the numerical finding of Libeskind et al. based on a N-body experiment, due to the very low significance of the observed signals it remains inconclusive whether or not the velocity shear effect on the satellite distribution is truly universal.