Related papers: The Galactic Halo and CDM
Cold Dark Matter (CDM) theory, a pillar of modern cosmology and astrophysics, predicts the existence of a large number of starless dark matter halos surrounding the Milky Way (MW). However, clear observational evidence of these "dark"…
A possible solution to the small scale problems of the cold dark matter (CDM) scenario is that the dark matter consists of two components, a cold and a warm one. We perform a set of high resolution simulations of the Milky Way halo varying…
We examine recent suggestions that substructure in cold dark matter (CDM) halos may be in conflict with the presence of thin, dynamically fragile stellar disks. N-body simulations of an isolated disk/bulge/halo model of the Milky Way that…
We constrain the shape of the Milky Way's halo by dynamical modeling of the observed phase-space tracks of the Pal 5 and GD-1 tidal streams. We find that the only information about the potential gleaned from the tracks of these streams are…
We explore fundamental properties of the distribution of low mass dark matter halos within the cosmic web using warm dark matter (WDM) and cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological simulations. Using self abundance-matched mock galaxy catalogs,…
The cold dark matter (CDM) cosmology, which is the standard theory of the structure formation in the universe, predicts that the outer density profile of dark matter halos decreases with the cube of distance from the center. However, so far…
A sufficiently light scalar field slowly evolving in a potential can account for the dark energy that presently dominates the universe. This quintessence field is expected to couple directly to matter components, unless some symmetry of a…
I review current efforts to measure the mean density of dark matter near the Sun. This encodes valuable dynamical information about our Galaxy and is also of great importance for 'direct detection' dark matter experiments. I discuss…
The circumgalactic region of the Milky Way contains a large amount of gaseous mass in the warm-hot phase. The presence of this warm-hot halo observed through $z=0$ X-ray absorption lines is generally agreed upon, but its density,…
The characteristic prediction of the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model of cosmological structure formation is that the Universe should contain a wealth of small-scale structure -- low-mass dark matter haloes and subhaloes. However, galaxy…
The central densities of dark matter (DM) halos are much lower than predicted in cold DM models of structure formation. Confirmation that they have cores with a finite central density would allow us to rule out many popular types of…
Structure formation with cold dark matter (CDM) predicts halos with a central density cusp, which are observationally disfavored. If CDM particles have an annihilation cross section sigma*v ~ 10**(-29) (m/GeV) cm**2, then annihilations will…
We show that dissipationless LCDM simulations predict that the majority of the most massive subhaloes of the Milky Way are too dense to host any of its bright satellites (L_V > 10^5 L_sun). These dark subhaloes have circular velocities at…
We study the prospects for the current microlensing searches, which have recently discovered several candidates, to yield useful information about the flattening of the Galaxy dark matter halo. Models of HI warps and N-body simulations of…
The atomic hydrogen gas (HI) disk in the outer region (beyond ~10 kpc from the centre) of Milky Way can provide valuable information about the structure of the dark matter halo. The recent 3-D thickness map of the outer HI disk from the all…
$\Lambda$CDM cosmology predicts the hierarchical formation of galaxies which build up mass by merger events and accreting smaller systems. The stellar halo of the Milky Way has proven to be useful a tool for tracing this accretion history.…
The arrangement of dwarf galaxies in a thin plane surrounding the Milky Way has been thought to contradict the prevailing cosmological model of cold dark matter in the Universe. New work suggests that this arrangement may just be a…
Much evidence suggests that we live in a flat Cold Dark Matter universe with a cosmological constant. Accurate analytic formulae are now available for many properties of the dark halo population in such a Universe. Assuming current…
A wealth of recent observational studies shows the dark matter in the Milky Way to have the following fundamental properties: 1) there is no detectable dark matter associated with the Galactic disk -- the dark matter is distributed in a…
Numerical simulations have revealed the presence of long-lived substructure in Cold Dark Matter (CDM) halos. These surviving cores of past merger and accretion events vastly outnumber the known satellites of the Milky Way. This finding has…