Related papers: How chameleons core dwarfs with cusps
Chameleon fields are scalar fields whose mass depends on the ambient matter density. We investigate the effects of these fields on the growth of density perturbations on sub-galactic scales and the formation of the first dark matter halos.…
Cold Dark Matter (CDM) simulations predict a central cusp in the mass distribution of galaxies. This prediction is in stark contrast with observations of dwarf galaxies which show a central plateau or 'core' in their density distribution.…
Dwarf galaxies pose significant challenges for cosmological models. In particular, current models predict a dark matter density that is divergent at the center, in sharp contrast with observations which indicate an approximately constant…
A clear prediction of the Cold Dark Matter model is the existence of cuspy dark matter halo density profiles on all mass scales. This is not in agreement with the observed rotation curves of spiral galaxies, challenging on small scales the…
Galaxies in the nearby Universe, particularly dwarf systems, exhibit inner mass profiles of dark matter haloes that systematically depart from canonical cold dark matter expectations, signalling an interplay between baryonic feedback and…
We study ultralight scalar fields with quadratic couplings to Standard-Model fermions and derive strong constraints from white-dwarf mass-radius data. Such couplings source scalar profiles inside compact stars, shift fermion masses, and can…
Rotation curves of galaxies probe their total mass distributions, including dark matter. Dwarf galaxies are excellent systems to investigate the dark matter density distribution, as they tend to have larger fractions of dark matter compared…
Following work by Khoury and Weltman, we introduce a scalar field phi, the chameleon, which is conformally coupled to matter. That is, matter experiences a metric which is a conformal transform (parametrized by phi) of the Einstein metric.…
Recent high-resolution simulations of the formation of dark-matter halos have shown that the distribution of subhalos is scale-free, in the sense that if scaled by the velocity dispersion of the parent halo, the velocity distribution…
We use 31 simulated galaxies from the MaGICC project to investigate the effects of baryonic feedback on the density profiles of dark matter (DM) haloes. The sample covers a wide mass range: 9.4e9<Mhalo/Msun<7.8e11, hosting galaxies with…
Chameleon scalar fields can screen their associated fifth forces from detection by changing their mass with the local density. These models are an archetypal example of a screening mechanism, and have become an important target for both…
The central density profiles in dwarf galaxy halos depend strongly on the nature of dark matter. Recently, in Malhan et al. (2021), we employed N-body simulations to show that the cuspy cold dark matter (CDM) subhalos predicted by…
Super-chameleon models where all types of matter belong to three secluded sectors, i.e. the dark, supersymmetry breaking and matter sectors, are shown to be dynamically equivalent to ultra-local models of modified gravity. In the dark…
The chameleon scalar field is considered as a possible cause of accelerated expansion of the Universe. The chameleon field induces an interaction potential between a particle and a massive body. Previous experiments with falling cold…
The chameleon is a scalar field whose mass depends on the density of its environment. Chameleons are necessarily coupled to matter particles and will excite transitions between atomic energy levels in an analogous manner to photons. When…
Theories of modified gravity where light scalars with non-trivial self-interactions and non-minimal couplings to matter-chameleon and symmetron theories-dynamically suppress deviations from general relativity in the solar system. On other…
Dwarf galaxies have a wide variety of structures, such as dark matter (DM) distribution, stellar-to-halo mass ratio, and stellar density. Recent high-resolution simulations have shown a variety of stellar-to-halo mass ratios for dwarf…
We investigate how diversity in the core-halo mass relation affects constraints on the fuzzy dark matter particle mass $m_\psi$ inferred from the internal kinematics of dwarf galaxies, and how these constraints are impacted by the inclusion…
We investigate the in-spiraling timescales of globular clusters in dwarf spheroidal (dSph) and dwarf elliptical (dE) galaxies, due to dynamical friction. We address the problem of these timescales having been variously estimated in the…
Formation and disruption of dark-matter cusps are reviewed. Accumulation of baryons at the center of a halo can displace the dark matter, converting singular density cusps into low-density cores. The displaced mass can be of order 10 M_b…