Related papers: Pre-reionization Fossils, Ultra-faint Dwarfs and t…
The Local Group contains some dwarf galaxies that apparently formed all their stars early, lost their gas to winds or ionization, and survive today as ``fossils'' from the epoch of reionization. This study presents new models of these…
The long term time evolution of tidal dwarf satellite galaxies with two different initial densities orbiting a host galaxy that resembles the Milky Way has been studied using a large set of Newtonian N-Body simulations. From the simulations…
We calculate orbits for the Milky Way dwarf galaxies with proper motions, and compare these to subhalo orbits in a high resolution cosmological simulation. We use the simulation data to assess how well orbits may be recovered in the face of…
We use a self-consistent model of galaxy formation and the evolution of the intergalactic medium to study the effects of the reionization of the universe at high redshift on the properties of satellite galaxies like those seen around the…
Ghostly stellar haloes are extended haloes of stars composed solely of debris of pre-reionization fossil galaxies and should exist in dwarf galaxies with total masses $<10^{10}$ M$_\odot$. Fossil galaxies are even smaller mass dwarf…
We study the Local Group (LG) dwarf galaxy population predicted by the \apostle $\Lambda$CDM cosmological hydrodynamics simulations. These indicate that: (i)~the total mass within $3$ Mpc of the Milky Way-Andromeda midpoint ($M_{\rm 3Mpc}$)…
We revisit the well known discrepancy between the observed number of Milky Way (MW) dwarf satellite companions and the predicted population of cold dark matter (CDM) sub-halos, in light of the dozen new low luminosity satellites found in…
We explore the effect of local stellar radiation on the formation and evolution of dwarf galaxies around Milky Way (MW) analogues. Using five simulations from the Auriga project, both with and without local stellar radiation, we find that…
The smallest satellites of the Milky Way ceased forming stars during the epoch of reionization and thus provide archaeological access to galaxy formation at $z>6$. Numerical studies of these ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs) require…
In recent years the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has unraveled a new population of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs) in the vicinity of the Milky Way (MW) whose origin remains a puzzle. Using a suite of collisionless N-body simulations, we…
We calculate orbits for the Milky Way dwarf galaxies with proper motions, and compare these to subhalo orbits in a high resolution cosmological simulation. We use this same simulation to assess how well are able to recover orbits in the…
Hierarchical Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models predict that Milky Way (MW) sized halos contain hundreds of dense low-mass dark satellites, an order of magnitude more than the number of observed satellites in the Local Group (LG). If the CDM…
Dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies have emerged a powerful probe of small-scale dark matter clustering and of cosmic reionization. They exhibit structural and chemical continuity with dwarf irregular galaxies in the field and with…
The observed luminosity function (LF) of satellite galaxies shows several interesting features that require a better understanding of gas-thermodynamic processes and feedback effects related to reionization and galaxy formation. In galaxy…
We present FIRE/Gizmo hydrodynamic zoom-in simulations of isolated dark matter halos, two each at the mass of classical dwarf galaxies ($M_{\rm vir} \simeq 10^{10} M_{\odot}$) and ultra-faint galaxies ($M_{\rm vir} \simeq 10^9 M_{\odot}$),…
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies that form in halo substructures provide stringent constraints on dark matter annihilation. Many ultrafaint dwarfs discovered with modern surveys contribute significantly to these constraints. At present, because of…
The existence of ultra-faint dwarf (UFD) galaxies highlights the need to push our theoretical understanding of galaxies to extremely low mass. We examine the formation of UFDs by twice running a fully cosmological simulations of dwarf…
We present Keck/DEIMOS spectroscopy of stars in 8 of the newly discovered ultra-faint dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way. We measure the velocity dispersions of Canes Venatici I and II, Ursa Major I and II, Coma Berenices, Hercules, Leo IV…
Context. In the Local Group, dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) and ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs) exhibit large velocity dispersions. These values are generally attributed to the presence of substantial amounts of dark matter (DM), in…
We use a particle tagging technique to dynamically populate the N-body Via Lactea II high-resolution simulation with stars. The method is calibrated using the observed luminosity function of Milky Way satellites and the concentration of…