English

Collisional interaction limits between dark matters and baryons in `cooling flow' clusters

Astrophysics 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

Presuming weak collisional interactions to exchange the kinetic energy between dark matter and baryonic matter in a galaxy cluster, we re-examine the effectiveness of this process in several `cooling flow' galaxy clusters using available X-ray observations and infer an upper limit on the heavy dark matter particle (DMP)-proton cross section σxp\sigma_{\rm xp}. With a relative collisional velocity VV-dependent power-law form of σxp=σ0(V/103kms1)a\sigma_{\rm xp}=\sigma_0(V/10^3 {\rm km s^{-1}})^a where a0a\leq 0, our inferred upper limit is σ0/mx\lsim2×1025cm2GeV1\sigma_0/m_{\rm x}\lsim 2\times10^{-25} {\rm cm}^2 {\rm GeV}^{-1} with mxm_{\rm x} being the DMP mass. Based on a simple stability analysis of the thermal energy balance equation, we argue that the mechanism of DMP-baryon collisional interactions is unlikely to be a stable nongravitational heating source of intracluster medium (ICM) in inner core regions of `cooling flow' galaxy clusters.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0711.3555,
  title  = {Collisional interaction limits between dark matters and baryons in `cooling flow' clusters},
  author = {Jian Hu and Yu-Qing Lou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0711.3555},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

8 pages, 2 figures, MNRAS accepted

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:46:12.895Z