Evidence for Early Filamentary Accretion from the Andromeda Galaxy's Thin Plane of Satellites

TL;DR

This study demonstrates through high-resolution simulations that the observed thin, rotating plane of satellites around Andromeda can naturally arise within the Cold Dark Matter framework, especially in early-forming, high-concentration halos.

Contribution

It shows that the existence of a thin, extended satellite plane is compatible with Cold Dark Matter models and links its formation to early accretion along dark matter filaments.

Findings

Simulations produce satellite planes similar to Andromeda's.

Early halo formation correlates with thinner satellite planes.

Satellite accretion occurs along dark matter filaments at high redshift.

Abstract

Recently it has been shown that a large fraction of the dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting the Andromeda galaxy are surprisingly aligned in a thin, extended and kinematically coherent planar structure. The presence of such a structure seems to challenge the current Cold Dark Matter paradigm of structure formation, which predicts a more uniform distribution of satellites around central objects. We show that it is possible to obtain a thin, extended, rotating plane of satellites resembling the one in Andromeda in cosmological collisionless simulations based on the Cold Dark Matter model. Our new high resolution simulations show a correlation between the formation time of the dark matter halo and the thickness of the plane of satellites. Our simulations have a high incidence of satellite planes as thin, extended, and as rich as the one in Andromeda and with a very coherent kinematic structure when we select high concentration/early forming halos. By tracking the formation of the satellites in the plane we show that they have been mainly accreted onto the main object along thin dark matter filaments at high redshift. Our results show that the presence of a thin, extended, rotating plane of satellites is not a challenge for the Cold Dark Matter paradigm, but actually supports one of the predictions of this paradigm related to the presence of filaments of dark matter around galaxies at high redshift.