Luminosity Functions and Host-to-Host Scatter of Dwarf Satellite Systems in the Local Volume

TL;DR

This study measures distances to dwarf satellites around nearby galaxies, compares their luminosity functions with simulations, and finds that observed systems have more bright satellites than models predict, highlighting the galaxy-subhalo connection.

Contribution

It provides new distance measurements confirming satellite associations and compares observed satellite luminosity functions with cosmological simulations, revealing discrepancies in satellite brightness distributions.

Findings

Observed satellite systems have more bright and fewer faint satellites than models predict.

The host-to-host scatter in satellite luminosity functions matches model predictions when accounting for host mass.

The Milky Way's satellite luminosity function is typical among Local Volume hosts.

Abstract

Low-mass satellites around Milky Way (MW)-like galaxies are important probes of small scale structure and galaxy formation. However, confirmation of satellite candidates with distance measurements remains a key barrier to fast progress in the Local Volume (LV). We measure the surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) distances to recently cataloged candidate dwarf satellites around 10 massive hosts within $D<12$ Mpc to confirm association. The satellite systems of these hosts are complete and mostly cleaned of contaminants down to $M_g{\sim}-9$ to $-10$, within the area of the search footprints. Joining this sample with hosts surveyed to comparable or better completeness in the literature, we explore how well cosmological simulations combined with common stellar to halo mass relations (SHMR) match observed satellite luminosity functions in the classical satellite luminosity regime. Adopting a SHMR that matches hydrodynamic simulations, the predicted overall satellite abundance agrees well with the observations. The MW is remarkably typical in its luminosity function amongst LV hosts. Contrary to recent results, we find that the host-to-host scatter predicted by the model is in close agreement with the scatter between the observed systems, once the different masses of the observed systems are taken into account. However, we find significant evidence that the observed systems have more bright and fewer faint satellites than the SHMR model predicts, necessitating a higher normalization of the SHMR around halo masses of $10^{11}$ \msun\ than present in common SHMRs. These results demonstrate the utility of nearby satellite systems in inferring the galaxy-subhalo connection in the low-mass regime.