English

The mass distribution in Spirals

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-05-13 v2

Abstract

In the past years a wealth of observations has unraveled the structural properties of the Dark and Luminous mass distribution in spirals. These have pointed out to an intriguing scenario not easily explained by present theories of galaxy formation. The investigation of individual and coadded objects has shown that the spiral rotation curves follow, from their centers out to their virial radii, a Universal profile (URC) that arises from the tuned combination of a stellar disk and of a dark halo. The importance of the latter component decreases with galaxy mass. Individual objects, on the other hand, have clearly revealed that the dark halos encompassing the luminous discs have a constant density core. This resulting observational scenario poses important challenges to presently favored theoretical Λ\LambdaCDM Cosmology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0902.1703,
  title  = {The mass distribution in Spirals},
  author = {Paolo Salucci and Christiane Frigerio Martins},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0902.1703},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Version matching the Proceedings of the CRAL-IPNL conference "Dark Energy and Dark Matter", Lyon, 2008, references updated, an useful link provided

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:09:50.576Z