Does filamentary accretion of dark matter sub-halos naturally produce a VPOS-like structure?
15 May 2012, 08:44 UTC
In the previous post we discussed the VPOS, the vast polar structure of satellite objects around the Milky Way. One of the suggested origins within the cosmological cold dark matter paradigm is that the satellites have been preferentially accreted along large, cosmic filaments. These are long, thread-like structures which arise naturally during the formation of structure in the cosmos. The movie below shows how they come about:
One work suggesting that filamentary accretion can solve the VPOS-problem is Lovell et al. (2011). Its abstract claims that:
“All haloes possess a population of subhaloes that rotates in the same direction as the main halo and three of them possess, in addition, a population that rotates in the opposite direction. These configurations arise from the filamentary accretion of subhaloes. Quasi-planar distributions of coherently rotating satellites, such as those inferred in the Milky Way and other galaxies, arise naturally in simulations of a ΛCDM universe.“
Note the part we marked in bold face. This statement of theirs suggests that a structure like the VPOS is a natural outcome of cosmological simulations, which arises due to the filaments around ...




