Related papers: The detection of sub-solar mass dark matter halos
A discussion at a Scientific American level of the idea that the constituents of the dark mater in galactic halos are primordial intermediate-mass black holes with masses between ten and one hundred thousand times the solar mass.
The shapes of dark halos (e.g. spherical, oblate or triaxial) provide important clues to the formation history of the halos, to their baryon content and to the nature of the dark matter. The halo shapes also influence the dynamics of the…
The Universe was nearly smooth and homogeneous before a redshift of z = 100, about 20 million years after the Big Bang. After this epoch, the tiny fluctuations imprinted upon the matter distribution during the initial expansion began to…
The balance of evidence indicates that individual galaxies and groups or clusters of galaxies are embedded in enormous distributions of cold, weakly interacting dark matter. These dark matter 'halos' provide the scaffolding for all luminous…
Dark matter haloes have long been recognized as one of the fundamental building blocks of large scale structure formation models. Despite their importance -- or perhaps because of it! -- halo definitions continue to evolve towards more…
The cold dark matter scenario predicts that a large number of dark subhalos should be located within the halo of each Milky-way sized galaxy. One tell-tale signature of such dark subhalos could be additional milliarcsecond-scale image…
Cosmological models in which dark matter consists of cold elementary particles predict that the dark halo population should extend to masses many orders of magnitude below those at which galaxies can form. Here we report a cosmological…
We discuss the formation of supermassive black holes in the early universe, and how to probe their subsequent evolution with the upcoming mm/sub-mm telescope ALMA. We first focus on the chemical and radiative conditions for black hole…
We propose that dark matter is dominantly comprised of atomic bound states. We build a simple model and map the parameter space that results in the early universe formation of hydrogen-like dark atoms. We find that atomic dark matter has…
The Cold Dark Matter theory of gravitationally-driven hierarchical structure formation has earned its status as a paradigm by explaining the distribution of matter over large spans of cosmic distance and time. However, its central tenet,…
The evolution of halos consisting of weakly self-interacting dark matter particles is summarized. The halos initially contain a central density cusp as predicted by cosmological models. Weak self-interaction leads to the formation of an…
The nature of the Massive Compact Halo objects seen in microlensing experiments and interpreted as dark matter in the Halo of our Galaxy remains a mystery. Arguments are presented that these events are probably not ordinary stellar or…
We analyse the properties of substructures within dark matter halos (subhalos) using a set of high-resolution numerical simulations of the formation of structure in a Lambda-CDM Universe. Our simulation set includes 11 high-resolution…
We use the Millennium Simulation, a large, high resolution N-body simulation of the evolution of structure in a LambdaCDM cosmology, to study the properties and fate of substructures within a large sample of dark matter haloes. We find that…
According to the cold dark matter scenario, a large number of dark subhalos should be located within the halo of each Milky-way sized galaxy. One promising possibility for detecting such subhalos is to try to observe their gravitational…
The possibility that primordial black hole binary mergers of stellar mass can explain the signals detected by the gravitational-wave interferometers has attracted much attention. In this scenario, primordial black holes can comprise only…
If the dark matter is part of a hidden sector with only very feeble couplings to the Standard Model, the lightest particle in the hidden sector will generically be long-lived and could come to dominate the energy density of the universe…
The very first stars likely formed from metal-free, molecular hydrogen-cooled gas at the centers of dark matter minihalos. Prior to nuclear fusion, these stars may have been supported by dark matter heating from annihilations in the star,…
We present a new definition of subhalos in dissipationless dark matter N-body simulations, based on the coherent identification of their dynamically bound constituents. Whereas previous methods of determining the energetically bound…
Dark matter is an important ingredient of galaxies, as was recognised early on by Ken Freeman himself! Evidence for dark matter halos is still indirect, based on analysing motions of tracers such as gas and stars. In a sense the visible…