Radial distribution and strong lensing statistics of satellite galaxies and substructure using high-resolution ACDM hydrodynamical simulations

Abstract

We analyse the number density and radial distribution of substructures and satellite galaxies using cosmological simulations that follow the gas dynamics of a baryonic component, including shock heating, radiative cooling and star formation within the hierarchical concordance Lambda cold dark matter model. We find that the dissipation of the baryons greatly enhances the survival of subhaloes, especially in the galaxy core, resulting in a radial distribution of satellite galaxies that closely follows the overall mass distribution. Hydrodynamical simulations are necessary to resolve the adiabatic contraction and dense cores of galaxies, resulting in a total number of satellites a factor of 2 larger than that found in pure dark matter simulation, in good agreement with the observed spatial distribution of satellite galaxies within galaxies and clusters. Convergence tests show that the cored distribution found by previous authors in pure N-body simulations was due to the physical overmerging of dark matter only structures. We proceed to use a ray-shooting technique in order to study the impact of these additional substructures on the number of violations of the cusp caustic magnification relation. We develop a new approach to try to disentangle the effect of substructures from the intrinsic discreteness of N-body simulations. Even with the increased number of substructures in the centres of galaxies, we are not able to reproduce the observed high numbers of discrepancies observed in the flux ratios of multiply lensed quasars. © 2006 RAS.