A comparative study of satellite galaxies in Milky Way-like galaxies from HSC, DECaLS, and SDSS

We conduct a comprehensive and statistical study of the luminosity functions (LFs) for satellite galaxies, by counting photometric galaxies from HSC, DECaLS and SDSS around isolated central galaxies (ICGs) and galaxy pairs from the SDSS/DR7 spectroscopic sample. Results of different surveys show very good agreement. The satellite LFs can be measured down to $M_V\sim-10$, and for central primary galaxies as small as $8.5<\log_{10}M_\ast/M_\odot<9.2$ and $9.2<\log_{10}M_\ast/M_\odot<9.9$, which implies there are on average 3--8 satellites with $M_V<-10$ around LMC-mass ICGs. The bright end cutoff of satellite LFs and the satellite abundance are both sensitive to the magnitude gap between the primary and its companions, indicating galaxy systems with larger magnitude gaps are on average hosted by less massive dark matter haloes. By selecting primaries with stellar mass similar to our MW, we discovered that i) the averaged satellite LFs of ICGs with different magnitude gaps to their companions and of galaxy pairs with different colour or colour combinations all show steeper slopes than the MW satellite LF; ii) there are more satellites with $-15