English

Phase-Space Density Profiles in Scale-Free Cosmologies

Astrophysics 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

We use a set of high-resolution simulations of scale-free Einstein-de Sitter cosmologies to investigate the logarithmic slope of the phase-space density profile Q(r)=ρ(r)/σ3(r)Q(r) = \rho(r)/\sigma^3(r) of dark matter (DM) haloes. The initial conditions for the simulations are determined by a power law power spectrum of the form P(k)knP(k) \propto k^n. We compute the Q(r) profiles using the radial, tangential and full velocity dispersion, and the velocity anisotropy parameter, β(r)\beta(r). We express Q(r) as a single power-law Q(r)rαQ(r) \propto r^\alpha and derive a median slope α\alpha in each simulation and for each definition of Q. Our main findings are: 1. The various Q(r) profiles follow a power law to a good approximation. 2. The slopes depend on the concentration parameter c of the DM haloes, where for c10c \gtrsim 10 the slopes steepen with rising concentration and for c10c \lesssim 10 the trend flattens and even turns around. 3. The asymptotic value of β\beta as rRvirr\to R_{\mathrm{vir}} increases with the value of c. 4. In accordance with Zait et al. 2007 αrad\alpha_{\mathrm{rad}} becomes more negative as the asymptotic value of β\beta at the virial radius increases. 5. This introduces a weak dependence of the Q(r)Q(r) slopes on the slope of the power spectrum.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0809.1439,
  title  = {Phase-Space Density Profiles in Scale-Free Cosmologies},
  author = {Steffen R. Knollmann and Alexander Knebe and Yehuda Hoffman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0809.1439},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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