http://arxiv.org/abs/2205.00712

The observed planes of satellites' around the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies are notoriously difficult to explain under the $\Lambda$CDM paradigm. Here, we propose an alternative solution: domain walls arising in theories with symmetry-breaking scalar fields coupled to matter. Because of the matter coupling, satellite galaxies experience fifth forces as they pass through domain walls, leading to a subset of satellites with orbits confined to the domain wall plane. We demonstrate this effect using simple simulations of a toy model comprising point-like satellites and an infinite domain wall, and explore the efficacy of various planarity metrics in detecting this effect. We believe this is the first potentialnew physics’ explanation for the observed planes of satellites which does not do away with dark matter.

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A. Naik and C. Burrage
Tue, 3 May 22
49/82

Comments: 11 pages, 4 figures, prepared for submission to PRD. All code and plotting scripts available at this https URL