Interactions of Satellite Galaxies in Cosmological Dark Matter Halos

Abstract

We present a statistical analysis of the interactions between satellite galaxies in cosmological dark matter halos taken from fully self-consistent high-resolution simulations of galaxy clusters. We show that the number distribution of satellite encounters has a tail that extends to as many as three to four encounters per orbit. On average 30% of the substructure population had at least one encounter (per orbit) with another satellite galaxy. However, this result depends on the age of the dark matter host halo with a clear trend for more interactions in younger systems. We also report a correlation between the number of encounters and the distance of the satellites to the centre of the cluster — satellite galaxies closer to the centre experience more interactions. However, this can be simply explained by the radial distribution of the substructure population and merely reflects the fact that the density of satellites is higher in those regions.

In order to find substructure galaxies we applied (and present) a new technique based upon the N-body code MLAPM. This new halo finder MHF (MLAPM’s halo finder) acts with exactly the same accuracy as the N-body code itself and is therefore free of any bias and spurious mismatch between simulation data and halo finding precision related to numerical effects.