TY - JOUR
T1 - The coherent motion of Cen A dwarf satellite galaxies remains a challenge for ΛcDM cosmology
AU - Müller, Oliver
AU - Pawlowski, Marcel S.
AU - Lelli, Federico
AU - Fahrion, Katja
AU - Rejkuba, Marina
AU - Hilker, Michael
AU - Kanehisa, Jamie
AU - Libeskind, Noam
AU - Jerjen, Helmut
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© O. Müller et al. 2021.
PY - 2021/1/1
Y1 - 2021/1/1
N2 - The plane-of-satellites problem is one of the most severe small-scale challenges for the standard Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmological model: Several dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way and Andromeda co-orbit in thin, planar structures. A similar case has been identified around the nearby elliptical galaxy Centaurus A (Cen A). In this Letter, we study the satellite system of Cen A, adding twelve new galaxies with line-of-sight velocities from VLT/MUSE observations. We find that 21 out of 28 dwarf galaxies with measured velocities share a coherent motion. Similarly, flattened and coherently moving structures are found only in 0.2% of Cen A analogs in the Illustris-TNG100 cosmological simulation, independently of whether we use its dark-matter-only or hydrodynamical run. These analogs are not co-orbiting, and they arise only by chance projection, thus they are short-lived structures in such simulations. Our findings indicate that the observed co-rotating planes of satellites are a persistent challenge for ΛCDM, which is largely independent from baryon physics.
AB - The plane-of-satellites problem is one of the most severe small-scale challenges for the standard Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmological model: Several dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way and Andromeda co-orbit in thin, planar structures. A similar case has been identified around the nearby elliptical galaxy Centaurus A (Cen A). In this Letter, we study the satellite system of Cen A, adding twelve new galaxies with line-of-sight velocities from VLT/MUSE observations. We find that 21 out of 28 dwarf galaxies with measured velocities share a coherent motion. Similarly, flattened and coherently moving structures are found only in 0.2% of Cen A analogs in the Illustris-TNG100 cosmological simulation, independently of whether we use its dark-matter-only or hydrodynamical run. These analogs are not co-orbiting, and they arise only by chance projection, thus they are short-lived structures in such simulations. Our findings indicate that the observed co-rotating planes of satellites are a persistent challenge for ΛCDM, which is largely independent from baryon physics.
KW - Cosmology: observations
KW - Dark matter
KW - Galaxies: dwarf
KW - Galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD
KW - Galaxies: halos
KW - Galaxies: kinematics and dynamics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099354694&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1051/0004-6361/202039973
DO - 10.1051/0004-6361/202039973
M3 - Article
SN - 0004-6361
VL - 645
JO - Astronomy and Astrophysics
JF - Astronomy and Astrophysics
M1 - L5
ER -