Related papers: Lights in the Dark: Globular clusters as dark matt…
Globular clusters are compact, gravitationally bound systems of up to a million stars. The GCs in the Milky Way contain some of the oldest stars known, and provide important clues to the early formation and continuing evolution of our…
Globular clusters (GCs) are often used to estimate the dark matter content of galaxies, especially dwarfs, where other kinematic tracers are lacking. These estimates typically assume spherical symmetry and dynamical equilibrium, assumptions…
We present an empirical model for the number of globular clusters (GCs) in galaxies based on recent data showing a tight relationship between dark matter halo virial masses and GC numbers. While a simple base model forming GCs in low-mass…
A strong correlation exists between the total mass of a globular cluster (GC) system and the virial halo mass of the host galaxy. However, the total halo mass in this correlation is a statistical measure conducted on spatial scales that are…
The sizes of entire systems of globular clusters (GCs) depend on the formation and destruction histories of the GCs themselves, but also on the assembly, merger and accretion history of the dark matter (DM) haloes that they inhabit. Recent…
Dynamical models allow us to connect the motion of a set of tracers to the underlying gravitational potential, and thus to the total (luminous and dark) matter distribution. They are particularly useful for understanding the mass and…
Globular clusters (GCs) are among the oldest and densest stellar systems in the Universe, yet how they form remains a mystery. Here we present a suite of cosmological simulations in which both dark-matter-free GCs and dark-matter-rich dwarf…
We confirm that the number of globular clusters (GCs), N$_{GC}$, is an excellent tracer of their host galaxy's halo virial mass M$_{vir}$. The simple linear relation M$_{vir} = 5 \times 10^9$ M$_{\odot} \times$ N$_{GC}$ fits the data…
Globular clusters (GCs) lie scattered around the inner $40\%$ of the virial radius of galaxy clusters, potentially being excellent tracers of the underlying mass distribution. In this paper, we present a statistical method based on assuming…
The relation between the total mass contained in the globular clusters of a galaxy and the mass of its dark matter halo has been found observationally to be nearly linear over five decades of mass. However, the high-mass end of this…
We explore how diffuse stellar light and globular clusters (GCs) can be used to trace the matter distribution of their host halo using an observational methodology. For this, we use 117 simulated dark matter (DM) haloes from the $(34.4~\rm…
Globular clusters (GCs) are bright objects that span a wide range of galactocentric distances, and are thus probes of the structure of dark matter (DM) haloes. In this work, we explore whether the projected radial profiles of GCs can be…
The total mass M_GCS in the globular cluster (GC) system of a galaxy is empirically a near-constant fraction of the total mass M_h = M_bary + M_dark of the galaxy, across a range of 10^5 in galaxy mass. This trend is radically unlike the…
We first review reasons why dark matter is an interesting issue in connection with star clusters. Next we consider to what extent the presence of dark matter is consistent with their dynamics and structure. We review various model-dependent…
Clusters of galaxies, being dark matter dominated, have long been and still are the ideal cosmological targets to study the nature of dark matter. Constraints on the nature of dark matter comes in particular from the observational…
I critically review a methodology of using clusters of galaxies as cosmological probes. The understanding of the abundances and spatial correlations of dark matter halos has been significantly advanced especially for a last few years.…
We discuss some of the key open questions regarding the formation and evolution of globular clusters (GCs) during galaxy formation and assembly within a cosmological framework. The current state-of-the-art for both observations and…
All galaxies are thought to reside within large halos of dark matter, whose properties can only be determined from indirect observations. The formation and assembly of galaxies is determined from the interplay between these dark matter…
The determination of galaxy cluster mass is of great importance since it is directly linked to the well- known problem of dark matter in the Universe and to the cluster baryon content. X-ray observations from satellites have enabled a…
This paper explores if, and to what an extent, the stellar populations of early type galaxies can be traced through the colour distribution of their globular cluster systems. The analysis, based on a galaxy sample from the Virgo ACS data,…