On the Effect of the Large Magellanic Cloud on the Orbital Poles of Milky Way Satellite Galaxies

Understand

The reflex motion and distortion of the Milky Way (MW) halo caused by the infall of a massive Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) has been demonstrated to result in an excess of orbital poles of dark matter halo particles towards the LMC orbital pole.

• This was suggested to help explain the observed preference of MW satellite galaxies to co-orbit along the Vast Polar Structure (VPOS).
• We test this idea by correcting the positions and velocities of the MW satellites for the Galactocentric-distance-dependent shifts inferred from a LMC-infall simulation.
• While this should substantially reduce the observed clustering of orbital poles if it were mainly caused by the LMC, we instead find that the strong clustering remains preserved.