Alignment between satellite and central galaxies in the SDSS DR7: dependence on large-scale environment

TL;DR

This study investigates how the large-scale environment influences the alignment between satellite and central galaxies, revealing a strong dependence on environment and galaxy color, with implications for galaxy formation theories.

Contribution

It provides new observational evidence that large-scale environment and galaxy color significantly affect satellite-central galaxy alignment, highlighting different formation mechanisms.

Findings

Alignment depends strongly on environment, especially for blue centrals.

Satellites around blue centrals tend to be perpendicular in knots and more aligned in voids.

Color of central galaxies influences the satellite alignment pattern.

Abstract

The alignment between satellites and central galaxies has been studied in detail both in observational and theoretical works. The widely accepted fact is that the satellites preferentially reside along the major axis of their central galaxy. However, the origin and large-scale environment dependence of this alignment are still unknown. In an attempt to figure out those, we use data constructed from SDSS DR7 to investigate the large-scale environmental dependence of this alignment with emphasis on examining the alignments' dependence on the colour of the central galaxy. We find a very strong large-scale environmental dependence of the satellite-central alignment in groups with blue centrals. Satellites of blue centrals in knots are preferentially located perpendicular to the major axis of the centrals, and the alignment angle decreases with environment namely when going from knots to voids. The alignment angle strongly depend on the ${}^{0.1}(g-r)$ colour of centrals. We suggest that the satellite-central alignment is the result of a competition between satellite accretion within large scale-structure and galaxy evolution inside host haloes. For groups containing red central galaxies, the satellite-central alignment is mainly determined by the evolution effect, while for blue central dominated groups, the effect of large-scale structure plays a more important role, especially in knots. Our results provide an explanation for how the satellite-central alignment forms within different large-scale environments. The perpendicular case in groups and knots with blue centrals may also provide insight into understanding similar polar arrangements such the formation of the Milky Way and Centaurus A's satellite system.