Paper detail

A correlation between the number of satellites and the baryonic bulge-to-total ratio extending beyond the Local Group

Recent observations of the fields surrounding a few Milky-Way-like galaxies in the local Universe have become deep enough to enable investigations of the predictions of the standard LCDM cosmological model down to small scales outside the Local Group. Motivated by an observed correlation between the number of dwarf satellites (N_sat) and the bulge-to-total baryonic mass ratios (B/T) of the three main galaxies in the Local Group, i.e. the Milky Way, Andromeda, and Triangulum (M33), we use published data of three well-studied galaxies outside the Local Group, namely M81, Centaurus A, and M101, and their confirmed satellites, and we find a strong and significant correlation between N_sat and B/T. This presents itself in contradiction with the hitherto published results from cosmological simulations reporting an absence of a correlation between N_sat and B/T in the LCDM model. We conclude that, based on the current data, the N_sat vs. B/T correlation is no longer a property confined to only the Local Group.