Related papers: The first halos
In currently popular cosmological scenarios -- all variants of the cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogony -- some time beyond a redshift of 15, stars within the numerous small halos that condense with virial temperatures ~1e4 K created the first…
Ultracompact Minihalos (UCMHs) have been proposed as a type of dark matter sub-structure seeded by large-amplitude primordial perturbations and topological defects. UCMHs are expected to survive to the present era, allowing constraints to…
We explore the clustering properties of high redshift dark matter halos, focusing on halos massive enough to host early generations of stars or galaxies at redshift 10 and greater. Halos are extracted from an array of dark matter…
A variety of observational approaches have provided evidence for extended halos of dark matter surrounding elliptical galaxies, and for massive dark objects in (some of) their nuclei. What are the properties of the dark halos? How do they…
Aspects of primordial black holes, i.e. black holes formed in the early Universe, are reviewed. Special emphasis is put on their formation, their role as dark matter candidates and their manifold signatures, particularly through…
In cold dark matter cosmologies, small mass halos outnumber larger mass halos at any redshift. However, the lower bound for the mass of a galaxy is unknown, as are the typical luminosity of the smallest galaxies and their numbers in the…
In these lecture notes we review the current knowledge about the formation of the first luminous objects. We start from the cosmological context of hierarchical models of structure formation, and discuss the main physical processes which…
The standard theory of cosmic structure formation posits that the present-day rich structure of the Universe developed through gravitational amplification of tiny matter density fluctuations generated in its very early history. Recent…
We use a cosmological simulation of the Local Group to make quantitative and speculative predictions for direct detection experiments. Cold dark matter (CDM) halos form via a complex series of mergers, accretion events and violent…
We review observable signatures of the first generation of stars and low-luminosity quasars, including the metal enrichment, radiation background, and dust opacity/emission that they produce. We compute the formation history of collapsed…
The halo of the Milky Way provides unique elemental abundance and kinematic information on the first objects to form in the Universe, which can be used to tightly constrain models of galaxy formation and evolution. Although the halo was…
We present results of cosmological N-body hydrodynamic chemistry simulations of primordial structure growth and evolution in a scenario with warm dark matter (WDM) having a mass of 3 keV (thermal relic) and compare with a model consisting…
The smallest dark matter halos are formed first in the early universe. According to recent studies, the central density cusp is much steeper in these halos than in larger halos and scales as $\rho \propto r^{-(1.5-1.3)}$. We present results…
Neutralino dark matter leads to the formation of numerous earth mass dark matter haloes at redshifts z\approx 60 (Diemand et al. 2005). These abundant CDM micro-haloes have cuspy density profiles that can easily withstand the Galactic tidal…
The first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe may be Dark Stars, powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion. Weakly interacting massive particles, which are their own antiparticles, can annihilate and provide…
Recently the initial supersonic relative velocity between the dark matter and baryons was shown to have an important effect on galaxy formation at high redshift. We study the impact of this relative motion on the distribution of the…
Using standard Einstein theory, baryonic mass cannot account for observed galactic rotation velocities and gravitational lensing, attributed to galactic dark matter halos. In contrast, theory constrained by Weyl conformal scaling symmetry…
A recent study shows that gravitational scattering of dark matter, in the form of massive objects with mass $m \sim 10^3-10^4M_{\odot}$, could provide a possible solution to alleviate the small-scale structure problems of cold dark matter.…
The standard model for the formation of structure assumes that there existed small fluctuations in the early universe that grew due to gravitational instability. The origins of these fluctuations are as yet unclear. In this work we propose…
The nature of the main constituents of the mass of the universe is one of the outstanding riddles of cosmology and astro-particle physics. Current models explaining the evolution of the universe, and measurements of the various components…