On the Convergence of the Milky Way and M31 Kinematics from Cosmological Simulations

Abstract

The kinematics of the Milky Way (MW) and M31, the dominant galaxies in the Local Group (LG), can be used to estimate the LG total mass. New results on the M31 proper motion have recently been used to improve that estimate. Those results are based on kinematic priors that are sometimes guided and evaluated using cosmological N-body simulations. However, the kinematic properties of simulated LG analogs could be biased due to the effective power spectrum truncation induced by the small size of the parent simulation. Here we explore the dependence of LG kinematics on the simulation box size to argue that cosmological simulations need a box size on the order of 1 Gpc in order to claim convergence on the LG kinematic properties. Using a large enough simulation, we find M31 tangential and radial velocities relative to the MW to be in the range v tan = 105 − 59 + 94 km s − 1 and v rad = − 108 − 81 + 68 km s − 1 , respectively. This study highlights that LG kinematics derived from N-body simulations have to be carefully interpreted, taking into account the size of the parent simulation. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.