Search

We investigate a scenario where the formation of Globular Clusters (GCs) is triggered by high-speed collisions between infalling atomic-cooling subhalos during the assembly of the main galaxy host, a special dynamical mode of star formation that operates at high gas pressures and is intimately tied to LCDM hierarchical galaxy assembly. The proposed mechanism would give origin to "naked" globulars, as colliding dark matter subhalos and their stars will simply pass through one another while the warm gas within them clashes at highly supersonic speed and decouples from the collisionless component, in a process reminiscent of the Bullet galaxy cluster. We find that the resulting shock-compressed layer cools on a timescale that is typically shorter than the crossing time, first by atomic line emission and then via fine-structure metal-line emission, and is subject to gravitational instability and fragmentation. Through a combination of kinetic theory approximation and high-resolution $N$-body simulations, we show that this model may produce: (a) a GC number-halo mass relation that is linear down to dwarf galaxy scales and agrees with the trend observed over five orders of magnitude in galaxy mass; (b) a population of old globulars with a median age of 12 Gyr and an age spread similar to that observed; (c) a spatial distribution that is biased relative to the overall mass profile of the host; and (d) a bimodal metallicity distribution with a spread similar to that observed in massive galaxies., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal

We explore the effect of relic gravitational waves on the primordial phase change from the quark-gluon plasma into the low density hadron gas that occurred approximately $10^{-5}$s after the beginning. We show that the gravitational wave, through doing work on the fluid, modulates the local volumes, causing a pressure modulation which either suppresses or boosts the bubble cavitation rate. The boosted rate is significant, implying that the phase transition could have occurred earlier than if this interaction is not considered., Comment: 4 pages

If dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), dark matter subhalos in the Milky Way could be detectable as gamma-ray point sources due to WIMP annihilation. In this work, we perform an updated study of the detectability of dark matter subhalos as gamma-ray sources with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi LAT). We use the results of the Via Lactea II simulation, scaled to the Planck 2015 cosmological parameters, to predict the local dark matter subhalo distribution. Under optimistic assumptions for the WIMP parameters --- a 40 GeV particle annihilating to $b\bar{b}$ with a thermal cross-section, as required to explain the Galactic center GeV excess --- we predict that at most $\sim 10$ subhalos might be present in the third Fermi LAT source catalog (3FGL). This is a smaller number than has been predicted by prior studies, and we discuss the origin of this difference. We also compare our predictions for the detectability of subhalos with the number of subhalo candidate sources in 3FGL, and derive upper limits on the WIMP annihilation cross-section as a function of the particle mass. If a dark matter interpretation could be excluded for all 3FGL sources, our constraints would be competitive with those found by indirect searches using other targets, such as known Milky Way satellite galaxies., Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures

Over the last decade, warm dark matter (WDM) has been repeatedly proposed as an alternative scenario to the standard cold dark matter (CDM) one, potentially resolving several disagreements between the CDM model and observations on small scales. Here, we reconsider the most important CDM small-scale discrepancies in the light of recent observational constraints on WDM. As a result, we find that a conventional thermal (or thermal-like) WDM cosmology with a particle mass in agreement with Lyman-$\alpha$ is nearly indistinguishable from CDM on the relevant scales and therefore fails to alleviate any of the small-scale problems. The reason for this failure is that the power spectrum of conventional WDM falls off too rapidly. To maintain WDM as a significantly different alternative to CDM, more evolved production mechanisms leading to multiple dark matter components or a gradually decreasing small-scale power spectrum have to be considered., Comment: Typo corrected in Eq 1. Does not affect any results

The ever increasing size and complexity of data coming from simulations of cosmic structure formation demands equally sophisticated tools for their analysis. During the past decade, the art of object finding in these simulations has hence developed into an important discipline itself. A multitude of codes based upon a huge variety of methods and techniques have been spawned yet the question remained as to whether or not they will provide the same (physical) information about the structures of interest. Here we summarize and extent previous work of the "halo finder comparison project": we investigate in detail the (possible) origin of any deviations across finders. To this extent we decipher and discuss differences in halo finding methods, clearly separating them from the disparity in definitions of halo properties. We observe that different codes not only find different numbers of objects leading to a scatter of up to 20 per cent in the halo mass and Vmax function, but also that the particulars of those objects that are identified by all finders differ. The strength of the variation, however, depends on the property studied, e.g. the scatter in position, bulk velocity, mass, and the peak value of the rotation curve is practically below a few per cent, whereas derived quantities such as spin and shape show larger deviations. Our study indicates that the prime contribution to differences in halo properties across codes stems from the distinct particle collection methods and -- to a minor extent -- the particular aspects of how the procedure for removing unbound particles is implemented. We close with a discussion of the relevance and implications of the scatter across different codes for other fields such as semi-analytical galaxy formation models, gravitational lensing, and observables in general., Comment: 28 pages containing 13 figures & 4 tables + 9 pages appendix containing another 4 tables + 4 pages of references, accepted for publication in MNRAS

In a standard cold dark matter (CDM) cosmology, microhalos at the CDM cutoff scale are the first and smallest objects expected to form in the universe. Here we present results of high resolution simulations of three representative roughly Earth-mass microhalos in order to determine their inner density profile. We find that CDM microhalos in simulations without a cutoff in the power spectrum roughly follow the NFW density profile, just like the much larger CDM halos on galaxy and galaxy cluster scales. But having a cutoff in the initial power spectrum at a typical neutralino free streaming scale of $10^{-7} M_{\odot}$ makes their inner density profiles considerably steeper, i.e. $\rho \propto r^{-(1.3-1.4)}$, in good agreement with the results from Ishiyama et al. (2010). An extrapolation of the halo and subhalo mass functions down to the cutoff scale indicates that microhalos are extremely abundant throughout the present day dark matter distribution and might contribute significantly to indirect dark matter detection signals. Assuming a transition from a NFW to a steeper inner profile ($\rho \propto r^{-1.4}$) two orders of magnitude above the cutoff scale, the total boost factor for a Milky Way sized dark matter halo increases from about 3.5 to 4. We further find that CDM microhalo concentrations are consistent with the Bullock et al. (2001) model and clearly rule out simplistic power law models for the mass dependence of concentrations and subhalo annihilation, which would erroneously lead to very large boost factors (a few hundred for galaxy halos and over 1000 for clusters)., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, matches the published JCAP version

The nature of dark matter is still unknown and one of the most fundamental scientific mysteries. Although successfully describing large scales, the standard cold dark matter model (CDM) exhibits possible shortcomings on galactic and sub-galactic scales. It is exactly at these highly non-linear scales where strong astrophysical constraints can be set on the nature of the dark matter particle. While observations of the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest probe the matter power spectrum in the mildly non-linear regime, satellite galaxies of the Milky Way provide an excellent laboratory as a test of the underlying cosmology on much smaller scales. Here we present results from a set of high resolution simulations of a Milky Way sized dark matter halo in eight distinct cosmologies: CDM, warm dark matter (WDM) with a particle mass of 2 keV and six different cold plus warm dark matter (C+WDM) models, varying the fraction, $f_{\rm wdm}$, and the mass, $m_{\rm wdm}$, of the warm component. We used three different observational tests based on Milky Way satellite observations: the total satellite abundance, their radial distribution and their mass profile. We show that the requirement of simultaneously satisfying all three constraints sets very strong limits on the nature of dark matter. This shows the power of a multi-dimensional small scale approach in ruling out models which would be still allowed by large scale observations., Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in JCAP

A possible solution to the small scale problems of the cold dark matter (CDM) scenario is that the dark matter consists of two components, a cold and a warm one. We perform a set of high resolution simulations of the Milky Way halo varying the mass of the WDM particle ($m_{\rm WDM}$) and the cosmic dark matter mass fraction in the WDM component ($\bar{f}_{\rm W}$). The scaling ansatz introduced in combined analysis of LHC and astroparticle searches postulates that the relative contribution of each dark matter component is the same locally as on average in the Universe (e.g. $f_{\rm W,\odot} = \bar{f}_{\rm W}$). Here we find however, that the normalised local WDM fraction ($f_{\rm W,\odot}$ / $\bar{f}_{\rm W}$) depends strongly on $m_{\rm WDM}$ for $m_{\rm WDM} <$ 1 keV. Using the scaling ansatz can therefore introduce significant errors into the interpretation of dark matter searches. To correct this issue a simple formula that fits the local dark matter densities of each component is provided., Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in JCAP

Exploiting a fundamental characteristic of galaxy assembly in the {\Lambda}CDM paradigm, the observed spatial biasing and kinematics of metal-poor globular star clusters are used to constrain the local reionization epoch around individual galaxies. Selecting three galaxies located in different environments, the first attempt at constraining the environmental propagation of reionization in the local Universe is carried out. The joint constraint from the three galaxies (z_reion = 10.5^{+1.0}_{-0.9}) agrees remarkably well with the latest WMAP constraint on z_reion for a simple instantaneous reionization model. More importantly, the range of z_reion values found here are consistent with the global range of z_reion estimates from other observations. We furthermore find a 1.7{\sigma} indication that reionization completed in low-density environments before the intergalactic medium in high-density environments was reionized. This is consistent with certain theoretical models that predict that reionization was globally prolonged in duration, with neutral hydrogen pockets surviving in high-density environments, even after the surrounding regions were reionized. More generally, this work provides a useful constraint on the formation history of galaxy stellar halos., Comment: MNRAS in press

[abridged] We present a detailed comparison of fundamental dark matter halo properties retrieved by a substantial number of different halo finders. These codes span a wide range of techniques including friends-of-friends (FOF), spherical-overdensity (SO) and phase-space based algorithms. We further introduce a robust (and publicly available) suite of test scenarios that allows halo finder developers to compare the performance of their codes against those presented here. This set includes mock haloes containing various levels and distributions of substructure at a range of resolutions as well as a cosmological simulation of the large-scale structure of the universe. All the halo finding codes tested could successfully recover the spatial location of our mock haloes. They further returned lists of particles (potentially) belonging to the object that led to coinciding values for the maximum of the circular velocity profile and the radius where it is reached. All the finders based in configuration space struggled to recover substructure that was located close to the centre of the host halo and the radial dependence of the mass recovered varies from finder to finder. Those finders based in phase space could resolve central substructure although they found difficulties in accurately recovering its properties. Via a resolution study we found that most of the finders could not reliably recover substructure containing fewer than 30-40 particles. However, also here the phase space finders excelled by resolving substructure down to 10-20 particles. By comparing the halo finders using a high resolution cosmological volume we found that they agree remarkably well on fundamental properties of astrophysical significance (e.g. mass, position, velocity, and peak of the rotation curve)., Comment: 27 interesting pages, 20 beautiful figures, and 4 informative tables accepted for publication in MNRAS. The high-resolution version of the paper as well as all the test cases and analysis can be found at the web site http://popia.ft.uam.es/HaloesGoingMAD

Merging compact binaries are the one source of gravitational radiation so far identified. Because short-period systems which will merge in less than a Hubble time have already been observed as binary pulsars, they are important both as gravitational wave sources for observatories such as LIGO but also as progenitors for short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs). The fact that these systems must have large systemic velocities implies that by the time they merge, they will be far from their formation site. The locations of merging sites depend sensitively on the gravitational potential of the galaxy host, which until now has been assumed to be static. Here we refine such calculations to incorporate the temporal evolution of the host's gravitational potential as well as that of its nearby neighbors using cosmological simulations of structure formation. This results in merger site distributions that are more diffusively distributed with respect to their putative hosts, with locations extending out to distances of a few Mpc for lighter halos. The degree of mixing between neighboring compact binary populations computed in this way is severely enhanced in environments with a high number density of galaxies. We find that SGRB redshift estimates based solely on the nearest galaxy in projection can be very inaccurate, if progenitor systems inhere large systematic kicks at birth., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJL

In the standard cosmological model a mysterious cold dark matter (CDM) component dominates the formation of structures. Numerical studies of the formation of CDM halos have produced several robust results that allow unique tests of the hierarchical clustering paradigm. Universal properties of halos, including their mass profiles and substructure properties are roughly consistent with observational data from the scales of dwarf galaxies to galaxy clusters. Resolving the fine grained structure of halos has enabled us to make predictions for ongoing and planned direct and indirect dark matter detection experiments. While simulations of pure CDM halos are now very accurate and in good agreement (recently claimed discrepancies are addressed in detail in this review), we are still unable to make robust, quantitative predictions about galaxy formation and about how the dark matter distribution changes in the process. Whilst discrepancies between observations and simulations have been the subject of much debate in the literature, galaxy formation and evolution needs to be understood in more detail in order to fully test the CDM paradigm. Whatever the true nature of the dark matter particle is, its clustering properties must not be too different from a cold neutralino like particle to maintain all the successes of the model in matching large scale structure data and the global properties of halos which are mostly in good agreement with observations., Comment: Invited Review to appear on Advanced Science Letters (ASL), Special Issue on Computational Astrophysics, edited by Lucio Mayer. Higher quality version available at http://www.ucolick.org/~diemand/vl/publ/dm_dm_minirev.pdf ; movies, images and data at http://www.ucolick.org/~diemand/vl

While the connection between high-redshift star formation and the local universe has recently been used to understand the observed population of faint dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way (MW) halo, we explore how well these nearby objects can probe the epoch of first light. We construct a detailed, physically motivated model for the MW satellites based on the state-of-the-art Via Lactea II dark-matter simulations. Our model incorporates molecular hydrogen (H_2) cooling in low-mass systems and inhomogeneous photo-heating feedback during the internal reionization of our own galaxy. We find that the existence of MW satellites fainter than M_V ~ -5 is strong evidence for H_2 cooling in low-mass halos, while satellites with -5 > M_V > -9 were affected by hydrogen cooling and photoheating feedback. The age of stars in very low-luminosity systems and the minimum luminosity of these satellites are key predictions of our model. Most of the stars populating the brightest MW satellites could have formed after the epoch of reionization. Our models also predict a significantly larger dispersion in M_300 values than observed and a number of luminous satellites with M_300 as low as 10^6 solar masses., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. Updated to accepted version