Related papers: Illuminating the Darkest Galaxies
Mass models for a sample of 18 late-type dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies show that in almost all cases the contribution of the stellar disks to the rotation curves can be scaled to explain most of the observed rotation curves out…
Dwarf galaxies represent a powerful probe of annihilating dark matter particle models, with gamma-ray data setting some of the best bounds available. A major issue in improving over existing constraints consists in the limited knowledge of…
The nature of the dark matter in the Universe is one of the hardest unsolved problems in modern physics. Indeed, on one hand, the overwhelming indirect evidence from astrophysics seems to leave no doubt about its existence; on the other…
Satellite galaxies of the Milky Way are among the most promising targets for dark matter searches in gamma rays. We present a search for dark matter consisting of weakly interacting massive particles, applying a joint likelihood analysis to…
Exploring dark matter via observations of extreme astrophysical environments -- defined here as heavy compact objects such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, as well as supernovae and compact object merger events -- has been a…
We perform a joint analysis of dwarf galaxy data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in search of dark matter annihilation into a gamma-ray line. We employ a novel statistical method that takes into account the spatial and spectral…
We predict that there is a population of low-luminosity dwarf galaxies orbiting within the halo of the Milky Way that have surface brightnesses low enough to have escaped detection in star-count surveys. The overall count of stealth…
Recent observations show that the number of stars with very low metallicities in the dwarf spheroidal satellites of the Milky Way is low, despite the low average metallicities of stars in these systems. We undertake numerical simulations of…
Very-low-surface-density galactic systems have very low mean accelerations. They thus provide quintessential tests of the Modified Dynamics (MOND), which predicts an increasing mass discrepancy with decreasing acceleration. We describe…
Although most proposed dark matter candidates are stable, in order for dark matter to be present today, the only requirement is that its lifetime is longer than the age of the Universe, t_U ~ 4 10^17 s. Moreover, the dark matter particle…
We present observations and analysis of rotation curves and dark matter halo density profiles in the central regions of four nearby dwarf galaxies. This observing program has been designed to overcome some of the limitations of other…
Weak gravitational lensing is a unique probe of the dark side of the universe: it provides a direct way to map the distribution of dark matter around galaxies, clusters of galaxies and on cosmological scales. Furthermore, the measurement of…
Weak gravitational lensing has become an important tool to study the properties of dark matter halos around galaxies, thanks to the advent of large panoramic cameras on 4m class telescopes. This area of research has been developing rapidly…
If dark matter is composed of weakly interacting particles with mass in the GeV-TeV range, their annihilation or decay may produce gamma rays that could be detected by gamma-ray telescopes. Observations of dwarf spheroidal satellite…
In modified gravity theories that seek to explain cosmic acceleration, dwarf galaxies in low density environments can be subject to enhanced forces. The class of scalar-tensor theories, which includes f(R) gravity, predict such a force…
We calculate the expected white dwarf luminosity functions and discovery functions in photometric passbands, if these stellar remnants provide a substantial fraction of the sought Galactic dark matter, as suggested on various observational…
We investigate the distribution of dark matter (DM) in gas-rich, low-mass galaxies, confronting them with numerical cosmological simulations with cold dark matter (LCDM). We show that the derived rotation curves comply best with cored DM…
Weak gravitational lensing of distant galaxies by foreground structures has proven to be a powerful tool to study the mass distribution in the universe. The advent of panoramic cameras on 4m class telescope has led to a first generation of…
Under the assumption that dark matter is made of new particles, annihilations of those are required to reproduce the correct dark matter abundance in the Universe. This process can occur in dense regions of our Galaxy such as the Galactic…
Gravitational potential fluctuations driven by bursty star formation can kinematically 'heat up' dark matter at the centres of dwarf galaxies. A key prediction of such models is that, at a fixed dark matter halo mass, dwarfs with a higher…