Tidal stripping as a possible origin of the ultra diffuse galaxy lacking dark matter

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether tidal stripping during galaxy interactions can explain the extreme dark matter deficiency observed in the ultra diffuse galaxy NGC1052-DF2, using controlled N-body simulations.

Contribution

The study demonstrates through simulations that tidal stripping can produce dark-matter deficient galaxies like NGC1052-DF2 under specific orbital and structural conditions.

Findings

Simulations reproduce observed mass profile and size of NGC1052-DF2.

Dark-matter deficient galaxies are likely rare and found in groups or clusters.

Tidal stripping can account for extreme dark matter loss in certain galaxy interactions.

Abstract

Recent observations revealed a mysterious ultra diffuse galaxy, NGC1052-DF2, in the group of a large elliptical galaxy, NGC1052. Compared to expectations from abundance matching models, the dark matter mass contained in NGC1052-DF2 is smaller by a factor of $\sim 400$. We utilize controlled $N$-body simulations of the tidal interaction between NGC1052 and a smaller satellite galaxy, that we suppose as the progenitor of NGC1052-DF2, to test if tidal stripping can explain dark-matter deficiency at such levels. We find that when assuming a tightly bound and quite radial orbit and cored density structure for the dark halo of the satellite, our simulations reproduce well both the mass profile and the effective radius inferred from the observations of NGC1052-DF2. Orbital parameters are in the tail, but still consistent with measurements of their distributions from cosmological simulations. Such strongly dark-matter deficient galaxies, in our scenario, are thus expected to be relatively rare in groups and clusters, and not present in the field.