The Archetypal Ultra-diffuse Galaxy, Dragonfly 44, Is not a Dark Milky Way

Abstract

Due to the peculiar properties of ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs), understanding their origin presents a major challenge. Previous X-ray studies demonstrated that the bulk of UDGs lack substantial X-ray emission, implying that they reside in low-mass dark matter halos. This result, in concert with other observational and theoretical studies, pointed out that most UDGs belong to the class of dwarf galaxies. However, a subset of UDGs is believed to host a large population of globular clusters (GCs), which is indicative of massive dark matter halos. This, in turn, hints that some UDGs may be failed L ⋆ galaxies. In this work, I present Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of two archetypal UDGs, Dragonfly 44 and DF X1, and I constrain their dark matter halo mass based on the X-ray emission originating from hot gaseous emission and from the population of low-mass X-ray binaries residing in GCs. Both Dragonfly 44 and DF X1 remain undetected in X-rays. The upper limits on the X-ray emission exclude the possibility that these galaxies reside in massive ( M vir  ≳ 5 × 10 11 M ⊙ ) dark matter halos, suggesting that they are not failed L ⋆ galaxies. These results demonstrate that even these iconic UDGs resemble to dwarf galaxies with M vir  ≲ 10 11 M ⊙ , implying that UDGs represent a single galaxy population.