Testing the Galaxy-collision-induced Formation Scenario for the Trail of Dark-matter-deficient Galaxies with the Susceptibility of Globular Clusters to the Tidal Force

It has been suggested that a trail of diffuse galaxies, including two dark-matter-deficient galaxies (DMDGs), in the vicinity of NGC 1052 formed because of a high-speed collision between two gas-rich dwarf galaxies, one bound to NGC 1052 and the other one on an unbound orbit. The collision compresses the gas reservoirs of the colliding galaxies, which in turn triggers a burst of star formation. In contrast, the dark matter and preexisting stars in the progenitor galaxies pass through it. Since the high pressures in the compressed gas are conducive to the formation of massive globular clusters (GCs), this scenario can explain the formation of DMDGs with large populations of massive GCs, consistent with the observations of NGC 1052-DF2 (DF2) and NGC 1052-DF4. A potential difficulty with this "mini bullet cluster" scenario is that the observed spatial distributions of GCs in DMDGs are extended. GCs experience dynamical friction causing their orbits to decay with time. Consequently, their distribution at formation should have been even more extended than that observed at present. Using a semianalytic model, we show that the observed positions and velocities of the GCs in DF2 imply that they must have formed at a radial distance of 5–10 kpc from the center of DF2. However, as we demonstrate, the scenario is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the strong tidal forces from NGC 1052 strip the extendedly distributed GCs from DF2, requiring 33–59 massive GCs to form at the collision to explain observations.