Simulating the tiniest dwarf galaxies
Check our recent paper on ultrafaint dwarfs using FIRE simulations
The LMC, its satellites and LCDM
Our student Ethan Jahn has published a very exciting paper on the ultrafaint dwarfs expected as satellites of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).In collaboration with the FIRE team, we used cosmological hydrodynamical simulations to study the number and masses of satellites expected around dwarf galaxies like the LMC. Our study suggests that several of the ultrafaint dwarfs in the Milky Way along with some of the classical dwarf spheroidals (like the SMC, Carina and Fornax) were once satellites of the LMC. This has important implications for the mass of the Milky Way halo and also our understanding of the dark matter mass - stellar mass connection over the smallest scales.
You can download the ArXiv version here
Check also some of the media articles about our results: