The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. IX. Estimating the Efficiency
  of Galaxy Formation on the Lowest-Mass Scales
  The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey has recently determined the
luminosity function of galaxies in the core of the Virgo cluster down to
unprecedented magnitude and surface brightness limits. Comparing simulations of
cluster formation to the derived central stellar mass function, we attempt to
estimate the stellar-to-halo-mass ratio (SHMR) for dwarf galaxies, as it would
have been before they fell into the cluster. This approach ignores several
details and complications, e.g., the contribution of ongoing star formation to
the present-day stellar mass of cluster members, and the effects of adiabatic
contraction and/or violent feedback on the subhalo and cluster potentials. The
final results are startlingly simple, however; we find that the trends in the
SHMR determined previously for bright galaxies appear to extend down in a
scale-invariant way to the faintest objects detected in the survey. These
results extend measurements of the formation efficiency of field galaxies by
two decades in halo mass, or five decades in stellar mass, down to some of the
least massive dwarf galaxies known, with stellar masses of $\sim 10^5 M_\odot$.
