The Effects of Dark Matter and Baryonic Physics on the Milky Way Subhalo Population in the Presence of the Large Magellanic Cloud

TL;DR

This study compares how dark matter physics and baryonic effects influence the distribution of Milky Way subhalos, especially in the presence of the Large Magellanic Cloud, using cosmological simulations to identify observable differences.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the impacts of SIDM, WDM, and the Galactic disk on subhalo populations in MW+LMC systems, highlighting distinctive signatures for each physics model.

Findings

SIDM and WDM suppress the $V_{peak}$ function similarly, with mass dependence.

Inner subhalos are more disrupted by baryonic and self-interacting dark matter effects.

LMC-associated subhalo abundance is notably reduced in SIDM, affecting spatial anisotropy.

Abstract

Given recent developments in our understanding of the Large Magellanic Cloud's (LMC) impact on the Milky Way's (MW) dark matter subhalo population, we compare the signatures of dark matter and baryonic physics on subhalos in MW systems with realistic LMC analogs. In particular, we study the effects of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM), warm dark matter (WDM), and the Galactic disk on the peak maximum circular velocity ($V_{\mathrm{peak}}$) function, radial distribution, and spatial distribution of MW and LMC-associated subhalos using cosmological dark matter-only zoom-in simulations of MW+LMC systems. For a fixed abundance of subhalos expected to host dwarf galaxies ($V_{\mathrm{peak}}\gtrsim 20\ \mathrm{km\ s}^{-1}$), SIDM and WDM can produce a similar mass-dependent suppression of the subhalo $V_{\mathrm{peak}}$ function, while disk disruption is mass independent. Subhalos in the inner regions of the MW are preferentially disrupted by both self-interactions and the disk, while suppression in WDM is radially independent. The relative abundance of LMC-associated subhalos is not strongly affected by disk disruption or WDM, but is significantly suppressed in SIDM due to self-interactions with the LMC at early times and with the MW during LMC infall at late times, erasing spatial anisotropy in the MW subhalo population. These results provide avenues to distinguish dark matter and baryonic physics by combining properties of the MW and LMC subhalo populations probed by upcoming observations of satellite galaxies and stellar streams.