English

Dark matter response to galaxy formation

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-05-14 v3 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We have resimulated the six galaxy-sized haloes of the Aquarius Project including metal-dependent cooling, star formation and supernova feedback. This allows us to study not only how dark matter haloes respond to galaxy formation, but also how this response is affected by details of halo assembly history. In agreement with previous work, we find baryon condensation to lead to increased dark matter concentration. Dark matter density profiles differ substantially in shape from halo to halo when baryons are included, but in all cases the velocity dispersion decreases monotonically with radius. Some haloes show an approximately constant dark matter velocity anisotropy with β0.102 \beta \approx 0.1-02, while others retain the anisotropy structure of their baryon-free versions. Most of our haloes become approximately oblate in their inner regions, although a few retain the shape of their dissipationless counterparts. Pseudo-phase-space densities are described by a power law in radius of altered slope when baryons are included. The shape and concentration of the dark matter density profiles are not well reproduced by published adiabatic contraction models. The significant spread we find in the density and kinematic structure of our haloes appears related to differences in their formation histories. Such differences already affect the final structure in baryon-free simulations, but they are reinforced by the inclusion of baryons, and new features are produced. The details of galaxy formation need to be better understood before the inner dark matter structure of galaxies can be used to constrain cosmological models or the nature of dark matter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0911.2316,
  title  = {Dark matter response to galaxy formation},
  author = {Patricia B. Tissera and Simon D. M. White and Susana Pedrosa and Cecilia Scannapieco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0911.2316},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

14 pages, 9 figures. Accepted MNRAS. Revised version includes discussion on resolution effects and minor changes.

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