Tidal Dwarf Galaxies Bonn 2009: Ghosts from structure formation

Physics Centre Bad Honnef (Germany), May 25-29, 2009

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Talk

Title: Modelling the Milky Way satellites in a cosmological context

Date: Friday 29th May

Time: 12:15 - 12:45

Presentation file: talk_Li.pdf

Abstract:

We combine a series of high-resolution cosmological simulations with semi- analytic galaxy formation recipes to follow the evolution of a system re- sembling the Milky Way and its satellites. The semi-analytic model is based on that developed for the Millennium Simulation which successfully reproduces the properties of galaxies on large scales and as well as those of the Milky Way. In this model, we are able to reproduce the luminosity function of the satellites around the Milky Way by preventing cooling in haloes with v_vir < 16.7km/s (i.e. the atomic hydrogen cooling limit) and including the impact of the reionization of the Universe. Our model satellites show good agreement with the observations. In particular, the mean metallicities, half-light radii, stellar populations, mass-to-light ratios and the masses enclosed within 600 pc are well matched in our models. We also discuss how the satellite properties depend on the supernova feedback recipes.

photos by Julia T. Scho (ForeignLight.com) / Marcel S. Pawlowski