Bibcode
DOI
Prada, Francisco; Vitvitska, Mayrita; Klypin, Anatoly; Holtzman, Jon A.; Schlegel, David J.; Grebel, Eva K.; Rix, H.-W.; Brinkmann, J.; McKay, T. A.; Csabai, I.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 598, Issue 1, pp. 260-271.
Advertised on:
11
2003
Journal
Citations
200
Refereed citations
171
Description
Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we probe the halo mass
distribution by studying the velocities of satellites orbiting isolated
galaxies. In a subsample that covers 2500 deg2 on the sky, we
detect about 3000 satellites with absolute blue magnitudes going down to
MB=-14; most of the satellites have MB=-16 to -18,
comparable to the magnitudes of M32 and the Magellanic Clouds. After a
careful, model-independent removal of interlopers, we find that the
line-of-sight velocity dispersion of satellites declines with distance
to the primary. For an L* galaxy the rms line-of-sight
velocity changes from ~120 km s-1 at 20 kpc to ~60 km
s-1 at 350 kpc. This decline agrees remarkably well with
theoretical expectations, as all modern cosmological models predict that
the density of dark matter in the peripheral parts of galaxies declines
as ρDM~r-3. Thus, for the first time we find
direct observational evidence of the density decline predicted by
cosmological models; we also note that this result contradicts
alternative theories of gravity such as modified Newtonian dynamics
(MOND). We also find that the velocity dispersion of satellites within
100 kpc scales with the absolute magnitude of the central galaxy as
σ~L0.3 this is very close to the Tully-Fisher relation
for normal spiral galaxies.