English

Dark matter-baryons separation at the lowest mass scale: the Bullet Group

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2014-11-07 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We report on the X-ray observation of a strong lensing selected group, SL2S J08544-0121, with a total mass of 2.4±0.6×10142.4 \pm 0.6 \times 10^{14} M\rm{M_\odot} which revealed a separation of 124±20124\pm20 kpc between the X-ray emitting collisional gas and the collisionless galaxies and dark matter (DM), traced by strong lensing. This source allows to put an order of magnitude estimate to the upper limit to the interaction cross section of DM of 10 cm2^2 g1^{-1}. It is the lowest mass object found to date showing a DM-baryons separation and it reveals that the detection of bullet-like objects is not rare and confined to mergers of massive objects opening the possibility of a statistical detection of DM-baryons separation with future surveys.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1404.5633,
  title  = {Dark matter-baryons separation at the lowest mass scale: the Bullet Group},
  author = {F. Gastaldello and M. Limousin and G. Foëx and R. P. Muñoz and T. Verdugo and V. Motta and A. More and R. Cabanac and D. A. Buote and D. Eckert and S. Ettori and A. Fritz and S. Ghizzardi and P. J. Humphrey and M. Meneghetti and M. Rossetti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1404.5633},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters. Typos corrected