1. Shaken and stirred: the Milky Way's dark substructures
- Author
-
Till Sawala, Julio F. Navarro, Pauli Pihajoki, Kyle A. Oman, Simon D. M. White, Peter H. Johansson, Carlos S. Frenk, and Department of Physics
- Subjects
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) ,Cold dark matter ,DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXIES ,Dwarf galaxy problem ,Dark matter ,Scalar field dark matter ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics ,Astrophysics ,01 natural sciences ,dark matter ,GALACTIC DISKS ,MATTER HALOES ,SATELLITE GALAXIES ,Baryonic dark matter ,cosmology: theory ,0103 physical sciences ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics ,COLD STELLAR STREAM ,Physics ,010308 nuclear & particles physics ,Hot dark matter ,GLOBULAR-CLUSTER STREAMS ,Astronomy ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,115 Astronomy, Space science ,Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies ,Dark matter halo ,COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS ,OVERABUNDANCE PROBLEM ,Space and Planetary Science ,Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) ,Local Group ,DIGITAL SKY SURVEY ,RADIAL-DISTRIBUTION ,Dark fluid ,Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics - Abstract
The predicted abundance and properties of the low-mass substructures embedded inside larger dark matter haloes differ sharply among alternative dark matter models. Too small to host galaxies themselves, these subhaloes may still be detected via gravitational lensing, or via perturbations of the Milky Way's globular cluster streams and its stellar disk. Here we use the Apostle cosmological simulations to predict the abundance and the spatial and velocity distributions of subhaloes in the range 10^6.5-10^8.5 solar masses inside haloes of mass ~ 10^12 solar masses in LCDM. Although these subhaloes are themselves devoid of baryons, we find that baryonic effects are important. Compared to corresponding dark matter only simulations, the loss of baryons from subhaloes and stronger tidal disruption due to the presence of baryons near the centre of the main halo, reduce the number of subhaloes by ~ 1/4 to 1/2, independently of subhalo mass, but increasingly towards the host halo centre. We also find that subhaloes have non-Maxwellian orbital velocity distributions, with centrally rising velocity anisotropy and positive velocity bias which reduces the number of low-velocity subhaloes, particularly near the halo centre. We parameterise the predicted population of subhaloes in terms of mass, galactocentric distance, and velocities. We discuss implications of our results for the prospects of detecting dark matter substructures and for possible inferences about the nature of dark matter., Comment: 19 pages, submitted to MNRAS, comments welcome
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF