Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Dynamics Of Tidal Tails From Massive Satellites, Jh Choi, Md Weinberg, N Katz

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

We investigate the dynamical mechanisms responsible for producing tidal tails from dwarf satellites using N-body simulations. We describe the essential dynamical mechanisms and morphological consequences of tail production in satellites with masses greater than 0.0001 of the host halo virial mass. We identify two important dynamical coconspirators: (1) the points where the attractive force of the host halo and satellite are balanced (X-points) do not occur at equal distances from the satellite centre or at the same equipotential value for massive satellites, breaking the morphological symmetry of the leading and trailing tails and (2) the escaped ejecta in the leading …