The co-planarity of satellite galaxies delivered by randomly aligned cold mode accretion streams

Abstract

Recent observations have shown that the majority of the Andromeda galaxy's satellites are aligned in a thin plane. On the theoretical side it has been proposed that galaxies acquire their gas via cold streams. In addition, numerical simulations show that the same streams also deliver gas clumps which could potentially develop into satellite galaxies. Assuming that cold streams are a major source of satellite systems around galaxies we calculate the probabilities in two different models to find a certain fraction of satellites within a thin plane around the central galaxy of the host halo with and without having the same sense of rotation. Using simple geometrical considerations and adopting a random orientation of the streams we demonstrate that the vast thin disk of satellites detected around Andromeda can naturally be explained within this framework. In fact, without any satellite scattering, two streams would lead to too many satellites in the thin plane, compared with the observations. Three streams reproduce the observations very well. Natural implications from our model are that all massive galaxies should have a thin plane of satellites and that the satellites should naturally distribute themselves not only into a single plane but into several inclined ones. We estimate the effect of additional satellites accreted from random directions and find it to be of minor relevance for a mild inflow of satellites from random directions.