Related papers: Interstellar Gas and a Dark Disk
We study the vertical stellar distribution of the Milky Way thin disk in detail with particular focus on the outer disk. We treat the galactic disk as a gravitationally coupled, three-component system consisting of stars, atomic hydrogen…
Cold interstellar gas systems have been used to constrain dark matter (DM) models by the condition that the heating rate from DM must be lower than the astrophysical cooling rate of the gas. Following the methodology of Wadekar and Farrar…
Cold gas forms a significant mass fraction of the Milky Way disk, but is its most uncertain baryonic component. The density and distribution of cold gas is of critical importance for Milky Way dynamics, as well as models of stellar and…
If a component of the dark matter has dissipative interactions, it could collapse to form a thin dark disk in our Galaxy that is coplanar with the baryonic disk. It has been suggested that dark disks could explain a variety of observed…
We update the method of the Holmberg & Flynn (2000) study, including an updated model of the Milky Way's interstellar gas, radial velocities, an updated reddening map, and a careful statistical analysis, to bound the allowed surface density…
Predicting the local flux of dark matter particles is vital for dark matter direct detection experiments. To date, such predictions have been based on simulations that model the dark matter alone. Here we include the influence of the…
Context. Gas within a galaxy is forced to establish pressure balance against gravitational forces. The shape of an unperturbed gaseous disk can be used to constrain dark matter models. Aims. We derive the 3-D HI volume density distribution…
The interstellar thick disks of galaxies contain not only gas, but significant quantities of dust. Most of our knowledge of extraplanar dust in disk galaxies comes from direct broadband optical imaging of these systems, wherein the dust is…
We review most dynamical constraints on the gravitational field of spiral galaxies in general, and of the Milky Way in particular. Such constraints are of prime importance for determining the characteristics of the putative dark matter…
The relationship between magnetic field strength and gas density is essential to understand the interstellar medium and star formation. Zeeman measurements in dense atomic and molecular gas phases have traditionally been used to directly…
For nearly a century, more mass has been measured in galaxies than is contained in the luminous stars and gas. Through continual advances in observations and theory, it has become clear that the dark matter in galaxies is not comprised of…
The disks that surround young stars are mostly composed of molecular gas, which is harder to detect and interpret than the accompanying dust. Disk mass measurements have therefore relied on large and uncertain extrapolations from the dust…
The scale radius of dark matter halos is a critical parameter for specifying the density distribution of dark matter, and is therefore a fundamental parameter for modeling galaxies. We develop here a novel, observationally motivated probe…
We show that current microlensing and dynamical observations of the Galaxy permit to set interesting constraints on the Dark Matter local density and profile slope towards the galactic centre. Assuming state-of-the-art models for the…
We characterize stellar, gas, and dark matter mass distributions for 17 nearby massive disk galaxies from the PHANGS sample. This allows us to compute the gravitational potential that vertically confines the interstellar gas and determines…
We probe the gravitational force perpendicular to the Galactic plane at the position of the Sun based on a sample of red giants, with measurements taken from the DR3 Gaia catalogue. Measurements far out of the Galactic plane up to 3.5 kpc…
Massive satellite accretions onto early galactic disks can lead to the deposition of dark matter in disk-like configurations that co-rotate with the galaxy. This phenomenon has potentially dramatic consequences for dark matter detection…
In this article we review the methods used to determine the gas and dust masses of protoplanetary disks, with an emphasis on the lesser characterized total gas mass. Our review encompasses all the indirect tracers and the methodology that…
Cold interstellar gas clouds provide an exciting new method to discover dark matter. Their immense size makes them uniquely sensitive to interactions from the heaviest, most rarefied dark matter models. Using gas cloud observations, we…
The content of interstellar clouds, in particular the inventory of diffuse molecular gas, remains uncertain. We identified a sample of isolated clouds, approximately 100 solar masses in size, and used the dust content to estimate the total…