Related papers: An N-body/hydrodynamical simulation study of the m…
We present a simplified and fast method for simulating minor mergers between galaxy clusters. Instead of following the evolution of the dark matter halos directly by the N-body method, we employ a rigid potential approximation for both…
If dark matter has a large self-interaction scattering cross section, then interactions among dark-matter particles will drive galaxy and cluster halos to become spherical in their centers. Work in the past has used this effect to rule out…
We suggest that two-to-two dark matter fusion may be the relaxation process that resolves the small-scale structure problems of the cold collisionless dark matter paradigm. In order for the fusion cross section to scale correctly across…
(Abridged) We present a HST weak-lensing study of the merging galaxy cluster "El Gordo" (ACT-CL J0102-4915) at z=0.87 discovered by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration as the strongest SZ decrement in its ~1000 sq. deg survey. Our…
Mergers between galaxy clusters are an important stage in the formation of the large-scale structure of the Universe. Some of the mergers show a spectacular bow shock that formed as a result of recent passage of a smaller cluster through a…
Major mergers between massive clusters have a profound effect in the intracluster gas, which may be used as a probe of the dynamics of structure formation at the high end of the mass function. An example of such a merger is observed at the…
We calculate merger rates of dark matter haloes using the Extended Press-Schechter approximation (EPS) for the Spherical Collapse (SC) and the Ellipsoidal Collapse (EC) models. Merger rates have been calculated for masses in the range…
Merging galaxy clusters have become one of the most important probes of dark matter, providing evidence for dark matter over modified gravity and even constraints on the dark matter self-interaction cross-section. To properly constrain the…
Cluster mergers are an important laboratory for studying the behaviour of dark matter (DM) and intracluster gas. There are dissociative collisions that can separate the intracluster gas from the DM. Abell 2034 presents clear dissociative…
When a dark matter halo moves through a background of dark matter particles, self-interactions can lead to both deceleration and evaporation of the halo and thus shift its centroid relative to the collisionless stars and galaxies. We study…
We report on work in progress by the Virgo consortium, a collaboration set up to carry out large simulations of the formation of galaxies and large-scale structure exploiting the latest generation of parallel supercomputers. We show results…
If dark matter has a non-zero self-interaction cross-section, then dark matter halos of individual galaxies in cluster cores should experience a drag force from the ambient dark matter of the cluster, which will not affect the stellar…
N-body simulations were conducted of pairs of galaxies with a 3:1 mass ratio on parabolic orbits, in order to quantify the effect of dynamical friction. The effects of varying the ratio of the dark matter halo size to the distance of…
Galaxy cluster mergers are rich sources of information to test cluster astrophysics and cosmology. However, cluster mergers produce complex projected signals that are difficult to interpret physically from individual observational probes.…
The small-scale structure problems of the universe can be solved by self-interacting dark matter that becomes strongly interacting at low energies. A particularly predictive model is resonant short-range self-interactions, with a…
Dark matter (DM) self-interactions alter the matter distribution on galactic scales and alleviate tensions with observations. A feature of the self-interaction cross section is its angular dependence, influencing offsets between galaxies…
[Abridged] High-resolution N-body simulations have recently shown that the structural properties of highly nonlinear cosmic structures, as e.g. their average concentration at a given mass, could be significantly modified in the presence of…
We present BAHAMAS-SIDM, the first large-volume, (400/h Mpc)^3, cosmological simulations including both self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) and baryonic physics. These simulations are important for two primary reasons: 1) they include the…
We adopt the conduction fluid approximation to model the steady-state distribution of matter around a massive black hole at the center of a weakly collisional cluster of particles. By "`weakly collisional" we mean a cluster in which the…
Self-interacting dark matter has been proposed as a hypothesis to explain the shallow central slopes of the density profiles of dark matter halos in galaxies. In order to be consistent with observational studies at scales of galaxy…