Numerical simulations challenged on the prediction of massive subhalo abundance in galaxy clusters: the case of Abell 2142

TL;DR

This study compares observed galaxy cluster subhalo abundance with simulations, revealing a significant deficit of massive subhalos in simulations that persists even with baryonic physics, indicating a fundamental discrepancy in current models.

Contribution

It demonstrates a substantial difference between observed and simulated massive subhalo counts in galaxy clusters, challenging current simulation models and highlighting the need for improved understanding of dark matter and baryonic effects.

Findings

Simulations show significantly fewer massive subhalos than observations.

The discrepancy persists even when including baryonic physics in models.

Results align with previous strong lensing studies indicating similar issues.

Abstract

In this Letter we compare the abundance of member galaxies of a rich, nearby ($z=0.09$) galaxy cluster, Abell 2142, with that of halos of comparable virial mass extracted from sets of state-of-the-art numerical simulations, both collisionless at different resolutions and with the inclusion of baryonic physics in the form of cooling, star formation, and feedback by active galactic nuclei. We also use two semi-analytical models to account for the presence of orphan galaxies. The photometric and spectroscopic information, taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 12 (SDSS DR12) database, allows us to estimate the stellar velocity dispersion of member galaxies of Abell 2142. This quantity is used as proxy for the total mass of secure cluster members and is properly compared with that of subhalos in simulations. We find that simulated halos have a statistically significant ($\gtrsim 7$ sigma confidence level) smaller amount of massive (circular velocity above $200\,{\rm km\, s^{-1}}$) subhalos, even before accounting for the possible incompleteness of observations. These results corroborate the findings from a recent strong lensing study of the Hubble Frontier Fields galaxy cluster MACS J0416 \citep{grillo2015} and suggest that the observed difference is already present at the level of dark matter (DM) subhalos and is not solved by introducing baryonic physics. A deeper understanding of this discrepancy between observations and simulations will provide valuable insights into the impact of the physical properties of DM particles and the effect of baryons on the formation and evolution of cosmological structures.