Over the past five years, searches in Sloan Digital Sky Survey data have more than doubled the number of known dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, and have revealed a population of ultra-faint galaxies with luminosities smaller than typical globular clusters, L ~ 1000 Lsun. These systems are the faintest, most dark matter dominated, and most metal poor galaxies in the universe. Completeness corrections suggest that we are poised on the edge of a vast discovery space in galaxy phenomenology, with hundreds more of these extreme galaxies to be discovered as future instruments hunt for the low-luminosity threshold of galaxy formation. Dark matter dominated dwarfs of this kind probe the small-scale power-spectrum, provide the most stringent limits on the phase-space packing of dark matter, and offer a particularly useful target for dark matter indirect detection experiments. Full use of dwarfs as dark matter laboratories will require synergy between deep, large-area photometric searches; spectroscopic and astrometric follow-up with next-generation optical telescopes; and subsequent observations with gamma-ray telescopes for dark matter indirect detection.
Modified Gravity (MOG) and Non-Local Gravity (NLG) are two alternative theories to General Relativity. They are able to explain the rotation curves of spiral galaxies and clusters of galaxies without including dark matter (Moffat & Rahvar 2013, 2014; Rahvar & Mashhoon 2014). In the weak-field approximation these two theories have similar forms, with an effective gravitational potential that has two components: (i) Newtonian gravity with the gravitational constant enhanced by a factor $(1+α)$ and (ii) a Yukawa type potential that produces a repulsive force with length scale $1/μ$. In this work …
In this paper we present new optical observations of the galaxy NGC 185 intended to reveal the status of supernova remnants (SNRs) in this dwarf companion of the Andromeda galaxy. Previously, it was reported that this galaxy hosts one SNR. Our deep photometric study with the 2m telescope at Rozhen National Astronomical Observatory using narrow-band H$α$ and [SII] filters revealed complex structure of the interstellar medium in the center of the galaxy. To confirm the classification and to study the kinematics of the detected nebulae, we carried out spectroscopic observations using the SCORPIO …
We carried out visual and parametric searches for dwarf galaxies in five loose groups of galaxies. Follow-up spectroscopy with the HET has shown a 50% success rate of morphological selection. The evolutionary status of the studied groups differs: while the NGC 6962 group has a partially relaxed core, surrounded by an infall region, the NGC 5005/5033 group and the IC 65 group, which consist only of late-type galaxies, are probably still assembling.
We employ recently published measurements of the velocity dispersions in the newly discovered dwarf satellite galaxies of Andromeda to test our previously published predictions of this quantity. The data are in good agreement with our specific predictions for each dwarf made a priori with MOND, with reasonable stellar mass-to-light ratios, and no dark matter, while Newtonian dynamics point to quite large mass discrepancies in these systems. MOND distinguishes between regimes where the internal field of the dwarf, or the external field of the host, dominates. The data appear to recognize this d…
Generic scalar-tensor theories of gravity predict deviations from Newtonian physics inside astrophysical bodies. In this paper, we point out that low mass stellar objects, red and brown dwarf stars, are excellent probes of these theories. We calculate two important and potentially observable quantities: the radius of brown dwarfs and the minimum mass for hydrogen burning in red dwarfs. The brown dwarf radius can differ significantly from the GR prediction and upcoming surveys that probe the mass-radius relation for stars with masses $<\mathcal{O}(0.1M_\odot)$ have the potential to place new co…
The radial acceleration relation at the EDGE of galaxy formation: testing its universality in low-mass dwarf galaxies
Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP)（波茨坦阿斯特罗物理学会）；Universität Potsdam（波茨坦大学）；University of Surrey（萨里大学）；Nanjing University（南京大学）；Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto（波尔图大学空间与天体物理研究所）；Leiden Observatory, Leiden University（莱顿大学莱顿天文台）；University of Bath（巴斯大学）；Lund University（隆德大学）
New Measurements of Distances to Galaxies in the NGC 1052 Field with the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes: Testing the Bullet-Dwarf Origin of the Trail
University of California Santa Cruz（加州大学圣克鲁兹分校）；Space Telescope Science Institute（太空望远镜科学研究所）；San José State University（圣何塞州立大学）；Yale University（耶鲁大学）
Verlinde (2016) has proposed a new modified theory of gravity, Emergent Gravity (EG), as an alternative to dark matter. EG reproduces the Tully-Fisher relationship with no free parameters and agrees with the velocity curves of most massive, spiral galaxies well. In its current form, the theory only applies to isolated, spherically symmetric systems in a dark energy-dominated Universe, and thus can only be tested fairly with such systems. This paper presents a framework for rotation curve tests of EG using isolated dwarf galaxies. Here I extend the EG equations to axisymmetric distributions for…
The dearth of dwarf galaxies in the local universe is hard to reconcile with the large number of low mass haloes expected within the concordance $Λ$CDM paradigm. In this paper we perform a systematic evaluation of the uncertainties affecting the measurement of DM halo abundance using galaxy kinematics. Using a large sample of dwarf galaxies with spatially resolved kinematic data we derive a correction to obtain the observed abundance of galaxies as a function of their halo maximum circular velocity from the line-of-sight velocity function in the Local Volume. This estimate provides a direct me…
The scenario consistent with a wealth of observations for the missing mass problem is that of weakly interacting dark matter particles. However, arguments or proposals for a Newtonian or relativistic modified gravity scenario continue to be made. A distinguishing characteristic between the two scenarios is that dark matter particles can produce a gravitational effect, in principle, without the need of baryons while this is not the case for the modified gravity scenario where such an effect must be correlated with the amount of baryonic matter. We consider here ultra-faint dwarf (UFD) galaxies …
We present new photometric data from our Herschel Key Programme, the Dwarf Galaxy Survey (DGS), dedicated to the observation of the gas and dust in 48 low-metallicity environments. They were observed with PACS and SPIRE onboard Herschel at 70,100,160,250,350, and 500 microns. We focus on a systematic comparison of the derived FIR properties (FIR luminosity, dust mass, dust temperature and emissivity index) with more metal-rich galaxies and investigate the detection of a potential submm excess. The data reduction method is adapted for each galaxy to derive the most reliable photometry from the …
Dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies are ideal objects to test modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), because in most of these galaxies the accelerations fall below the threshold below where MOND supposedly applies. We have selected from the literature a sample of 27 dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies. MOND is successful in explaining the general shape of the observed rotation curves for roughly three quarters of the galaxies in the sample presented here. However, for the remaining quarter, MOND does not adequately explain the observed rotation curves. Considering the uncertainties in…
The 2020s are poised to continue the past two decades of significant advances based on observations of dwarf galaxies in the nearby universe. Upcoming wide-field photometric surveys will probe substantially deeper than previous data sets, pushing the discovery frontier for new dwarf galaxies to fainter magnitudes, lower surface brightnesses, and larger distances. These dwarfs will be compelling targets for testing models of galaxy formation and cosmology, including the properties of dark matter and possible modifications to gravity. However, most of the science that can be extracted from nearb…
We present the recently derived Wolf et al. (2009) mass estimator, which is applicable for spherical pressure-supported stellar systems spanning over ten orders of magnitude in luminosity, as a tool to test galaxy formation theories. We show that all of the Milky Way dwarf spheroidal galaxies (MW dSphs) are consistent with having formed within a halo of mass approximately 3 x 10^9 Msun in LCDM cosmology. The faintest MW dSphs seem to have formed in dark matter halos that are at least as massive as those of the brightest MW dSphs, despite the almost five orders of magnitude spread in luminosity…
Semi-analytic Inference of Satellite Densities in the Cold Dark Matter Model Part I. Comparison to Ultra-faint Dwarf Kinematics
Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校莱因韦伯理论物理研究所）；Theoretical Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室理论物理组）；Department of Physics, Princeton University（普林斯顿大学物理系）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California - Irvine（加州大学尔湾分校物理与天文学系）；Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute（平顿研究所计算天体物理学中心）
Testing bosonic dark matter through white dwarf mass measurements
Universitat de València（瓦伦西亚大学）；Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥国立自治大学）；Universidad de Santiago de Compostela（圣地亚哥-德孔波斯特拉大学）；The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）
SN 2011fe is the nearest supernova of Type Ia (SN Ia) discovered in the modern multi-wavelength telescope era, and it also represents the earliest discovery of a SN Ia to date. As a normal SN Ia, SN 2011fe provides an excellent opportunity to decipher long-standing puzzles about the nature of SNe Ia. In this review, we summarize the extensive suite of panchromatic data on SN 2011fe, and gather interpretations of these data to answer four key questions: 1) What explodes in a SN Ia? 2) How does it explode? 3) What is the progenitor of SN 2011fe? and 4) How accurate are SNe Ia as standardizeable …
Sterile neutrino dark matter is expected to suppress structure formation at small astrophysical scales. The details of the suppression depend on the sterile neutrino production mechanism in the early universe. In this proceeding, we focus on the most popular cases of resonant production (via the mixing between active and sterile neutrinos) and scalar decay production (via the decay of a hypothetical scalar singlet). We first review current constraints from structure formation before discussing how the sterile neutrino dark matter hypothesis can alleviate the overabundance problem of dwarf gala…
