您选择的条件: Noam I. Libeskind
  • Hidden depths in the local Universe: The Stellar Stream Legacy Survey

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: Mergers and tidal interactions between massive galaxies and their dwarf satellites are a fundamental prediction of the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter cosmology. These events are thought to provide important observational diagnostics of nonlinear structure formation. Stellar streams in the Milky Way and Andromeda are spectacular evidence for ongoing satellite disruption. However, constructing a statistically meaningful sample of tidal streams beyond the Local Group has proven a daunting observational challenge, and the full potential for deepening our understanding of galaxy assembly using stellar streams has yet to be realised. Here we introduce the Stellar Stream Legacy Survey, a systematic imaging survey of tidal features associated with dwarf galaxy accretion around a sample of ~3100 nearby galaxies within z~0.02, including about 940 Milky Way analogues. Our survey exploits public deep imaging data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, which reach surface brightness as faint as ~29 mag/arcsec^2 in the r band. As a proof of concept of our survey, we report the detection and broad-band photometry of 24 new stellar streams in the local Universe. We discuss how these observations can yield new constraints on galaxy formation theory through comparison to mock observations from cosmological galaxy simulations. These tests will probe the present-day mass assembly rate of galaxies, the stellar populations and orbits of satellites, the growth of stellar halos and the resilience of stellar disks to satellite bombardment.

  • Possible observational evidence that cosmic filaments spin

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: Most cosmological structures in the universe spin. Although structures in the universe form on a wide variety of scales from small dwarf galaxies to large super clusters, the generation of angular momentum across these scales is poorly understood. We have investigated the possibility that filaments of galaxies - cylindrical tendrils of matter hundreds of millions of light-years across, are themselves spinning. By stacking thousands of filaments together and examining the velocity of galaxies perpendicular to the filament's axis (via their red and blue shift), we have found that these objects too display motion consistent with rotation making them the largest objects known to have angular momentum. The strength of the rotation signal is directly dependent on the viewing angle and the dynamical state of the filament. Just as it is easiest to measure rotation in a spinning disk galaxy viewed edge on, so too is filament rotation clearly detected under similar geometric alignment. Furthermore, the mass of the haloes that sit at either end of the filaments also increases the spin speed. The more massive the haloes, the more rotation is detected. These results signify that angular momentum can be generated on unprecedented scales.

  • On the Satellite Plane Problem

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: We study the Satellite Plane Problem (SP) of the Milky Way (MW) by using the recently published simulation data of TNG50-1. Here, we only consider the satellite plane consisting of the brightest 14 MW satellites (11 classical satellites plus Canes Venatici I(CVn I), Crater II and Antlia II). Only one (among 231 candidates) MW-like halo (haloID=395, at z=0, hereafter halo395 ) possesses a satellite plane as spatially thin and kinematically coherent as the observed one has been found. Halo395 resembles the MW in a number of intriguing ways: it hosts a spiral central galaxy and its satellite plane is almost ($\sim 87^{\circ}$) perpendicular to the central stellar disk. In addition, halo395 is embedded in a sheet plane, with a void on the top and bottom, similar to the local environment of MW. More interestingly, we found that the major subset (11 of 14) of the satellite plane of halo395 arise precisely from the peculiar geometry of its large-scale environment (e.g. sheet and voids). However, the other three members just appeared at the right places with the right velocities by chance at z=0. Although the satellite plane of halo395 is transient and came into existence at z=0, the MW-like Large-scale environment indeed promotes the formation of the satellite plane. Our results support previous conclusions: SP is not a serious challenge to the $\Lambda$CDM model and its formation is ascribed to the right environment.

  • The undiscovered ultra-diffuse galaxies of the Local Group

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) are attractive candidates to probe cosmological models and test theories of galaxy formation at low masses; however, they are difficult to detect because of their low surface brightness. In the Local Group (LG) a handful of UDGs have been found to date, most of which are satellites of the Milky Way and M31, and only two are isolated galaxies. It is unclear whether so few UDGs are expected. We address this by studying the population of UDGs formed in hydrodynamic constrained simulations of the LG from the HESTIA suite. For a LG with mass $M_{\rm LG}\!\left(<2.5\, {\rm Mpc}\right)=8\times10^{12}{\rm M_\odot}$, we predict that there are $12\pm3$ UDGs (68 per cent confidence) with stellar masses $10^6 \leq M_\ast\, /\, {\rm M_\odot} < 10^9$, and effective radii $R_{\rm e} \geq 1.5\, {\rm kpc}$, in the field of the LG, of which $2^{+2}_{-1}$ (68 per cent confidence) are detectable in the footprint of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Accounting for survey incompleteness, we find that up to 82, 90, and 100 per cent of all UDGs in the LG field would be observable in a future all-sky survey with a depth similar to the SDSS, the Dark Energy Survey, or the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, respectively. Our results suggest that there is a population of UDGs in the LG awaiting discovery.

  • The lopsided distribution of satellites of isolated central galaxies

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: Satellites are not randomly distributed around their central galaxies but show polar and planar structures. In this paper, we investigate the axis-asymmetry or lopsidedness of satellite galaxy distributions around isolated galaxies in a hydrodynamic cosmological simulation. We find a statistically significant lopsided signal by studying the angular distribution of the satellite galaxies' projected positions around isolated central galaxies in a two-dimensional plane. The signal is dependent on galaxy mass, color and large-scale environment. Satellites that inhabit low-mass blue hosts, or located further from the hosts show the most lopsided signal. Galaxy systems with massive neighbors exhibit stronger lopsidedness. This satellite axis-asymmetry signal also decreases as the universe evolves. Our findings are in agreement with recent observational results, and they provide a useful perspective for studying galaxy evolution, especially on the satellite accretion, internal evolution and interaction with the cosmic large-scale structure.

  • Cosmic Web-Halo Connection Between Twin Universes

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: Both simulation and observational data have shown that the spin and shape of dark matter halos are correlated with their nearby large-scale environment. As structure formation on different scales is strongly coupled, it is trick to disentangle the formation of halo with the large-scale environment, making it difficult to infer which is the driving force for the correlation between halo spin/shape with the large-scale structure. In this paper, we use N-body simulation to produce twin Universes that share the same initial conditions on small scales but different on large scales. This is achieved by changing the random seeds for the phase of those k modes smaller than a given scale in the initial conditions. In this way, we are able to disentangle the formation of halo and large-scale structure, making it possible to investigate how halo spin and shape correspond to the change of environment on large scales. We identify matching halo pairs in the twin simulations as those sharing the maximum number of identical particles within each other. Using these matched halo pairs, we study the cross match of halo spin and their correlation with the large-scale structure. It is found that when the large-scale environment changes (eigenvector) between the twin simulations, the halo spin has to rotate accordingly, although not significantly, to maintain the universal correlation seen in each simulation. Our results suggest that the large-scale structure is the main factor to drive the correlation between halo properties and their environment.

  • On the Satellite Plane Problem

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: We study the Satellite Plane Problem (SP) of the Milky Way (MW) by using the recently published simulation data of TNG50-1. Here, we only consider the satellite plane consisting of the brightest 14 MW satellites (11 classical satellites plus Canes Venatici I(CVn I), Crater II and Antlia II). Only one (among 231 candidates) MW-like halo (haloID=395, at z=0, hereafter halo395 ) possesses a satellite plane as spatially thin and kinematically coherent as the observed one has been found. Halo395 resembles the MW in a number of intriguing ways: it hosts a spiral central galaxy and its satellite plane is almost ($\sim 87^{\circ}$) perpendicular to the central stellar disk. In addition, halo395 is embedded in a sheet plane, with a void on the top and bottom, similar to the local environment of MW. More interestingly, we found that the major subset (11 of 14) of the satellite plane of halo395 arise precisely from the peculiar geometry of its large-scale environment (e.g. sheet and voids). However, the other three members just appeared at the right places with the right velocities by chance at z=0. Although the satellite plane of halo395 is transient and came into existence at z=0, the MW-like Large-scale environment indeed promotes the formation of the satellite plane. Our results support previous conclusions: SP is not a serious challenge to the $\Lambda$CDM model and its formation is ascribed to the right environment.