On the Effect of the Large Magellanic Cloud on the Orbital Poles of
  Milky Way Satellite Galaxies
  The reflex motion and distortion of the Milky Way (MW) halo caused by the
infall of a massive Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) has been demonstrated to
result in an excess of orbital poles of dark matter halo particles towards the
LMC orbital pole. This was suggested to help explain the observed preference of
MW satellite galaxies to co-orbit along the Vast Polar Structure (VPOS). We
test this idea by correcting the positions and velocities of the MW satellites
for the Galactocentric-distance-dependent shifts inferred from a LMC-infall
simulation. While this should substantially reduce the observed clustering of
orbital poles if it were mainly caused by the LMC, we instead find that the
strong clustering remains preserved. We confirm the initial study's main result
with our simulation of an MW-LMC-like interaction, and use it to identify two
reasons why this scenario is unable to explain the VPOS: (1) the orbital pole
density enhancement in our simulation is very mild (~10% within 50-250 kpc)
compared to the observed enhancement (~220-300%), and (2) it is very sensitive
to the specific angular momenta (AM) of the simulation particles, with higher
AM particles being affected the least. Particles in simulated dark matter halos
tend to follow more radial orbits (lower AM), so their orbital poles are more
easily affected by small offsets in position and velocity caused by an LMC
infall than objects with more tangential velocity (higher AM), such as the
observed dwarf galaxies surrounding the MW. The origin of the VPOS thus remains
unexplained.
