These star forming episodes may last for several billions of years, depending on the mass, orbit and concentration of the dark satellite, researchers said.
Researchers from the University of California, Riverside, and the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in The Netherlands presented a novel analysis of computer simulations, based on theoretical models, that study the interaction of a dwarf galaxy with a dark satellite.
This scenario predicts that many of the dwarf galaxies that we readily observe today should be forming stars at a higher rate than expected - or should be experiencing a starburst, researchers said.
Around large galaxies, such as the Milky Way, these dark matter sub-halos are large enough to host enough gas and dust to form small galaxies on their own, and some of these galactic companions, known as satellite galaxies, can be observed.
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These satellite galaxies can orbit for billions of years around their host before a potential merger.
The host's shape or morphology can also be disturbed due to the gravitational interaction.
Smaller halos form dwarf galaxies, which at the same time will be orbited by even smaller satellite sub-halos of dark matter which are now far too tiny to have gas or stars in them.
These dark satellites therefore are invisible to telescopes, but readily appear in theoretical models run in computer simulations.
Similar to mergers between more massive galaxies, the interaction between the dwarf galaxy and the dark satellite triggers morphological disturbances in the dwarf, which can completely change its structure from mainly disk-shaped to a spherical/elliptical system.
The findings were published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.