We consider the problem of estimating the virial mass of a dark halo from the positions and velocities of a tracer population. Although a number of general tools are available, more progress can be made if we are able to specify the functional form of the halo potential (although not its normalization). Here, we consider the particular case of the cosmologically motivated Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) halo and develop two simple estimators. We demonstrate their effectiveness against numerical simulations and use them to provide new mass estimates of Carina, Fornax, Sculptor, and Sextans dSphs.
The Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) density profile is often used to model gravitational lenses. For low values of the characteristic convergence ($κ_s \ll 1$) of this model - corresponding to galaxy and galaxy group mass scales - a high numerical precision is required in order to accurately compute several quantities in the strong lensing regime. An alternative for fast and accurate computations is to derive analytic approximations in this limit. In this work we obtain analytic solutions for several lensing quantities for elliptical (ENFW) and pseudo-elliptical (PNFW) NFW lens models on the typical…
We consider the reasons why a cuspy NFW-like profile persistently occurs in N-body simulations, in contradiction to some astronomical observations. The routine method of testing the convergence of N-body simulations (in particular, the negligibility of two-body scattering effect) is to find the conditions under which the shape of the formed structures is insensitive to numerical parameters. The results obtained with this approach suggest a surprisingly minor role of the particle collisions: the central density profile remains untouched and close to NFW, even if the simulation time significantl…
The $Λ$ cold dark matter ($Λ$CDM) scenario well describes the Universe at large scales, but shows some serious difficulties at small scales: the inner dark matter (DM) density profiles of spiral galaxies generally appear to be cored, without the $r^{-1}$ predicted by N-body simulations in the above scenario. In a more physical context, the baryons in the galaxy might backreact and erase the original cusp through supernova explosions. Before that this effect be investigated, it is important to determine how wide and frequent the discrepancy between observed and N-body predicted profiles is and …
We constrain properties of cluster haloes by performing likelihood analysis using lensing shear and flexion data. We test our analysis using two mock cluster haloes: an isothermal ellipsoid (SIE) model and a more realistic elliptical Navarro-Frenk-White (eNFW) model. For both haloes, we find that flexion is more sensitive to the halo ellipticity than shear. The introduction of flexion information significantly improves the constraints on halo ellipticity, orientation and mass. We also point out that there is a degeneracy between the mass and the ellipticity of SIE models in the lensing signal.
The accuracy of mass estimates by gravitational lensing using the thin-lens approximation applied to Navarro-Frenk-White mass models with a soft truncation mechanism recently proposed by Baltz, Marshall and Oguri is studied. The gravitational lens scenario considered is the case of the inference of lens mass from the observation of Einstein rings (strong lensing). It is found that the mass error incurred by the simplifying assumption of thin lenses is below 0.5%. As a byproduct, the optimal tidal radius of the soft truncation mechanism is found to be at most 10 times the virial radius of the m…
Recent high-resolution N-body CDM simulations indicate that nonsingular three-parameter models such as the Einasto profile perform better than the singular two-parameter models, e.g. the Navarro, Frenk and White, in fitting a wide range of dark matter haloes. While many of the basic properties of the Einasto profile have been discussed in previous studies, a number of analytical properties are still not investigated. In particular, a general analytical formula for the surface density, an important quantity that defines the lensing properties of a dark matter halo, is still lacking to date. To …
The effect of light refraction in a galaxy halo of dark matter, described by profiles of Navarro-Frenk-White and Burkett, was considered. Powers of the Cherenkov radiation for the refractive indexes of gravitational fields with these profiles were calculated. It was shown that correspondent radiation temperature in the X-rays range have the magnitude about some microKelvins. It was also marked that its detection may be the criteria on choosing the preferable dark matter density distribution in a galaxy.
An analytic galaxy model with $ρ\sim r^{-1}$ at small radii and $ρ\sim r^{-3.5}$ at large radii is presented. The asymptotic density fall-off is slower than the Hernquist model, but faster than the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile for dark matter haloes, and so in accord with recent evidence from cosmological simulations. The model provides the zeroth-order term in a biorthornomal basis function expansion, meaning that axisymmetric, triaxial and lopsided distortions can easily be added (much like the Hernquist model itself which is the zeroth-order term of the Hernquist-Ostriker expansion). T…
An analytical solution for the discrepancy between observed core-like profiles and predicted cusp profiles in dark matter halos is studied. We calculate the distribution function for Navarro-Frenk-White halos and extract energy from the distribution, taking into account the effects of baryonic physics processes. We show with a simple argument that we can reproduce the evolution of a cusp to a flat density profile by a decrease of the initial potential energy.
We investigate scaling relations between the dark matter (DM) halo model parameters for a sample of intermediate redshift early - type galaxies (ETGs) resorting to a combined analysis of Einstein radii and aperture velocity dispersions. Modeling the dark halo with a Navarro - Frenk - White profile and assuming a Salpeter initial mass function (IMF) to estimate stellar masses, we find that the column density ${\cal{S}}$ and the Newtonian acceleration within the halo characteristic radius $r_s$ and effective radius $R_{eff}$ are not universal quantities, but correlate with the luminosity $L_V$, …
We examine the possibility of a dark matter (DM) contribution to the recently observed gamma-ray spectrum seen in the M31 galaxy. In particular, we apply limits on Weakly Interacting Massive Particle DM annihilation cross-sections derived from the Coma galaxy cluster and the Reticulum II dwarf galaxy to determine the maximal flux contribution by DM annihilation to both the M31 gamma-ray spectrum and that of the Milky-Way galactic centre. We limit the energy range between 1 and 12 GeV in M31 and galactic centre spectra due to the limited range of former's data, as well as to encompass the high-…
N-body simulations predict that dark matter haloes are described by specific density profiles on both galactic- and cluster-sized scales. Weak gravitational lensing through the measurements of their first and second order properties, shear and flexion, is a powerful observational tool for investigating the true shape of these profiles. One of the three-parameter density profiles recently favoured in the description of dark matter haloes is the Einasto profile. We present exact expressions for the shear and the first and second flexions of Einasto dark matter haloes derived using a Mellin-trans…
Recent advances in N-body simulations of dark matter halos have shown that three-parameter models, in particular the Einasto profile characterized by d ln ρ(r)/d ln r / r with a shape parameter α < 0.3, are able to produce better fits to the 3D spatial density profiles than two-parameter models like the Navarro, Frenk and White (NFW), and Moore et al. profiles. In this paper, we present for the first time an analytically motivated form for the 2D surface mass density of the Einasto family of dark matter haloes, in terms of the 3D spatial density parameters for a wide range of the shape paramet…
By means of high resolution 2D hydrodynamical simulations, we study the evolution of the hot ISM for a large set of early-type galaxy models, characterized by various degrees of flattening and internal rotation. The galaxies are described by state-of-the-art axisymmetric two-component models, tailored to reproduce real systems; the dark matter haloes follow the Navarro-Frenk-White or the Einasto profile. The gas is produced by the evolving stars, and heated by Type Ia SNe. We find that, in general, the rotation field of the ISM in rotating galaxies is very similar to that of the stars, with a …
The dark matter halo sparsity, i.e. the ratio between spherical halo masses enclosing two different overdensities, provides a non-parametric proxy of the halo mass distribution which has been shown to be a sensitive probe of the cosmological imprint encoded in the mass profile of haloes hosting galaxy clusters. Mass estimations at several overdensities would allow for multiple sparsity measurements, that can potentially retrieve the entirety of the cosmological information imprinted on the halo profile. Here, we investigate the impact of multiple sparsity measurements on the cosmological model…
Dark matter (DM) haloes forming near the thermal cut-off scale of the density perturbations are unique, since they are the smallest objects and form through monolithic gravitational collapse, while larger haloes contrastingly have experienced mergers. While standard cold dark matter (CDM) simulations readily produce haloes that follow the universal Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) density profile with an inner slope, $ρ\propto r^{-α}$, with $α=1$, recent simulations have found that when the free-streaming cut-off expected for the CDM model is resolved, the resulting haloes follow nearly power-law den…
Recent claims of observational evidence for self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) have relied on a semi-analytic method for predicting the density profiles of galaxies and galaxy clusters containing SIDM. We present a thorough description of this method, known as isothermal Jeans modelling, and then test it with a large ensemble of haloes taken from cosmological simulations. Our simulations were run with cold and collisionless dark matter (CDM) as well as two different SIDM models, all with dark matter only variants as well as versions including baryons and relevant galaxy formation physics. Usi…
We construct simple triaxial generalisations of Navarro-Frenk-White haloes. The models have elementary gravitational potentials, together with a density that is cusped like 1/r at small radii and falls off like 1/r^3 at large radii. The ellipticity varies with radius in a manner that can be tailored to the user's specification. The closed periodic orbits in the planes perpendicular to the short and long axes of the model are well-described by epicyclic theory, and can be used as building blocks for long-lived discs. As an application, we carry out the simulations of thin discs of satellites in…
We have performed a series of numerical experiments to investigate how the primordial thermal velocities of fermionic dark matter particles affect the physical and phase space density profiles of the dark matter haloes into which they collect. The initial particle velocities induce central cores in both profiles, which can be understood in the framework of phase space density theory. We find that the maximum coarse-grained phase space density of the simulated haloes (computed in 6 dimensional phase space using the EnBid code) is very close to the theoretical fine-grained upper bound, while the…
We study the shapes of galaxy dark matter haloes by measuring the anisotropy of the weak gravitational lensing signal around galaxies in the second Red-sequence Cluster Survey (RCS2). We determine the average shear anisotropy within the virial radius for three lens samples: all galaxies with 19<m_r'<21.5, and the `red' and `blue' samples, whose lensing signals are dominated by massive low-redshift early-type and late-type galaxies, respectively. To study the environmental dependence of the lensing signal, we separate each lens sample into an isolated and clustered part and analyse them separat…
We present an axially symmetric formula to calculate the probability of finding gravitational arcs in galaxy clusters, being induced by their massive dark matter haloes, as a function of clusters redshifts and virial masses. The formula includes the ellipticity of the clusters dark matter potential by using a pseudo-elliptical approximation. The probabilities are calculated and compared for two dark-matter halo profiles, the Navarro, Frenk and White (NFW) and the Non-Singular-Isothermal-Sphere (NSIS). We demonstrate the power of our formulation through a Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test on the str…
The AIDA-TNG project. Abundance, radial distribution, and clustering properties of halos in alternative dark matter models
Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna（博洛尼亚大学）；INAF - Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna（意大利国家天体物理研究所博洛尼亚天文台）；INFN - Sezione di Bologna（意大利国家核物理研究所博洛尼亚分部）
We present the first lensing mass measurements of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) selected clusters. Using optical imaging from the Southern Cosmology Survey (SCS), we present weak lensing masses for three clusters selected by their SZ emission in the South Pole Telescope survey (SPT). We confirm that the SZ selection procedure is successful in detecting mass concentrations. We also study the weak lensing signals from 38 optically-selected clusters in ~8 square degrees of the SCS survey. We fit Navarro, Frenk and White (NFW) profiles and find that the SZ clusters have amongst the largest masses, as hi…
We present an analytic parametric model to describe the baryonic and dark matter distributions in clusters of galaxies with spherical symmetry. It is assumed that the dark matter density follows a Navarro, Frenk and White (NFW) profile and that the gas pressure is described by a generalised NFW (GNFW) profile. By further demanding hydrostatic equilibrium and that the gas fraction is small throughout the cluster, one obtains unique functional forms, dependent on basic cluster parameters, for the radial profiles of all the properties of interest in the cluster. We show these profiles are consist…
We present the results of a numerical study based on the analysis of the MUSIC-2 simulations, aimed at estimating the expected concentration-mass relation for the CLASH cluster sample. We study nearly 1400 halos simulated at high spatial and mass resolution, which were projected along many lines-of-sight each. We study the shape of both their density and surface-density profiles and fit them with a variety of radial functions, including the Navarro-Frenk-White, the generalised Navarro-Frenk-White, and the Einasto density profiles. We derive concentrations and masses from these fits and investi…
Efficient expansions of the gravitational field of (dark) haloes have two main uses in the modelling of galaxies: first, they provide a compact representation of numerically-constructed (or real) cosmological haloes, incorporating the effects of triaxiality, lopsidedness or other distortion. Secondly, they provide the basis functions for self-consistent field expansion algorithms used in the evolution of $N$-body systems. We present a new family of biorthogonal potential-density pairs constructed using the Hankel transform of the Laguerre polynomials. The lowest-order density basis functions a…
The virial theorem prescribes the ratio of the globally-averaged equatorial to vertical velocity dispersion of a tracer population in spherical and flattened dark haloes. This gives sequences of physical models in the plane of global anisotropy and flattening. The tracer may have any density, though there are particularly simple results for power-laws and exponentials. We prove the flattening theorem: for a spheroidally stratified tracer density with axis ratio q in a dark density potential with axis ratio g, the ratio of globally averaged equatorial to vertical velocity dispersion depends onl…
We exploit the detection of three distinct stellar subpopulations in the red giant branch of the Fornax dwarf Spheroidal to probe its density distribution. This allows us to resolve directly the evolution with radius of the dark matter mass profile. We find that a cored dark matter halo provides a perfect fit to the data, being consistent with all three stellar populations well within 1-sigma, and for the first time we are able to put constraints on the core size of such a halo. With respect to previous work, we do not strengthen the statistical exclusion of a dark matter cusp in Fornax, but w…
In the following work, we compute the positron production from branon dark matter annihilations in order to constrain extra-dimensional theories. By having assumed that the positron fraction measured by AMS-02 is well explained just with astrophysical sources, exclusion diagrams for the branon mass and the tension of the brane, the two parameters characterising the branon phenomenology become possible. Our analysis has been performed for a minimal and a medium diffusion model in one extra dimension for both pseudo-isothermal and Navarro Frenck White dark matter haloes. Our constraints in the d…
We present an adaptation of the standard scenario of disk-galaxy formation to the concordant LCDM cosmology aimed to derive analytical expressions for the scale length and rotation speed of present-day disks that form within four different, cosmologically motivated protogalactic dark matter halo-density profiles. We invoke a standard galaxy-formation model that includes virial equilibrium of spherical dark halos, specific angular momentum conservation during gas cooling, and adiabatic halo response to the gas inflow. The mean mass-fraction and mass-to-light ratio of the central stellar disk ar…
Rotation curves of spiral galaxies are fundamental tools in the study of dark matter. Here we test the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) dark matter model against rotation curve data of High and Low Surface Brightness (HSB and LSB) galaxies, respectively. When the rotational velocities increase over the whole observed range, the fit of the BEC model is similar to the one of the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) dark matter model. When however the rotation curves exhibit long flat regions, the NFW profiles provide a slightly better fit.
We test different implementations of the halo occupation distribution (HOD) model to reconstruct the spatial distribution of galaxies as predicted by a publicly available semi-analytical model (SAM). We compare the measured two-point correlation functions of the HOD mock catalogues and the SAM samples to quantify the fidelity of the reconstruction. We use fixed number density galaxy samples selected according to stellar mass or star formation rate (SFR). We develop three different schemes to populate haloes with galaxies with increasing complexity, considering the scatter of the satellite HOD …
The use of large, X-ray selected galaxy cluster catalogues for cosmological analyses requires a thorough understanding of the X-ray mass estimates. Weak gravitational lensing is an ideal method to shed light on such issues, due to its insensitivity to the cluster dynamical state. We perform a weak lensing calibration of 166 galaxy clusters from the REFLEX and BCS cluster catalogue and compare our results to the X-ray masses based on scaled luminosities from that catalogue. To interpret the weak lensing signal in terms of cluster masses, we compare the lensing signal to simple theoretical Navar…
We use the Millennium Simulation to quantify the statistical accuracy and precision of the escape velocity technique for measuring cluster-sized halo masses at z~0.1. We show that in 3D, one can measure nearly unbiased (<4%) halo masses (>1.5x10^14 M_solar h^-1) with 10-15% scatter. Line-of-sight projection effects increase the scatter to ~25%, where we include the known velocity anisotropies. The classical "caustic" technique incorporates a calibration factor which is determined from N-body simulations. We derive and test a new implementation which eliminates the need for calibration and util…
Following on our previous study of an analytic parametric model to describe the baryonic and dark matter distributions in clusters of galaxies with spherical symmetry, we perform an SZ analysis of a set of simulated clusters and present their mass and pressure profiles. The simulated clusters span a wide range in mass, 2.0 x 10^14 Msun < M200 < 1.0 x 10^15Msun, and observations with the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI) are simulated through their Sunyaev- Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. We assume that the dark matter density follows a Navarro, Frenk and White (NFW) profile and that the gas pressure …
We obtain predictions for the properties of cold dark matter annihilation radiation using high resolution hydrodynamic zoom-in cosmological simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies (APOSTLE project) carried out as part of the "Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments" (EAGLE) programme. Galactic halos in the simulation have significantly different properties from those assumed in the "standard halo model" often used in dark matter detection studies. The formation of the galaxy causes a contraction of the dark matter halo, whose density profile develops a steeper slope than the N…
The neutral hydrogen (HI) content of dark matter haloes forms an intermediate state in the baryon cycle that connects the hot shock-heated gas and cold star-forming gas in haloes. Measurement of the relationship between HI mass and halo mass therefore puts important constraints on galaxy formation models. We combine radio observations of HI in emission at low redshift ($z\sim 0$) with optical/UV observations of HI in absorption at high redshift ($1<z<4$) to derive constraints on the evolution of the HI-mass halo-mass (HIHM) relation from redshift $z=4$ to $z=0$. We find that one can model the …
For models in which dark matter annihilation is Sommerfeld-enhanced, the annihilation cross section increases at low relative velocities. Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) have low characteristic dark matter particle velocities and are thus ideal candidates to study such models. In this paper we model the dark matter phase space of dSphs as isotropic and spherically-symmetric, and determine the $J$-factors for several of the most important targets for indirect dark matter searches. For Navarro-Frenk-White density profiles, we quantify the scatter in the $J$-factor arising from the astrophysica…
If dark matter annihilates with a velocity-dependent cross section within a subhalo, then the magnitude and angular distribution of the resulting photon signal will change. These effects are encoded in the $J$-factor. In this work we compute the $J$-factor for a variety of choices for the cross section velocity-dependence, and for a variety of choices for the dark matter profile, including generalized Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW), Einasto, Burkert and Moore. We include the results of these computations as data products alongside the article. We find that the angular distribution of a future signa…
We consider the steady-state regime describing the density profile of a dark matter halo, if dark matter is treated as a Bose-Einstein condensate. We first solve the fluid equation for "canonical" cold dark matter, obtaining a class of density profiles which includes the Navarro-Frenk-White profile, and which diverge at the halo core. We then solve numerically the equation obtained when an additional "quantum pressure" term is included in the computation of the density profile. The solution to this latter case is finite at the halo core, possibly avoiding the "cuspy halo problem" present in so…
We expand our previous study on the relationship between changes in the orientation of the angular momentum vector of dark matter haloes ("spin flips") and changes in their mass (Bett & Frenk 2012), to cover the full range of halo masses in a simulation cube of length 100 $h^{-1}$ Mpc. Since strong disturbances to a halo (such as might be indicated by a large change in the spin direction) are likely also to disturb the galaxy evolving within, spin flips could be a mechanism for galaxy morphological transformation without involving major mergers. We find that 35% of haloes have, at some point i…
We present rotation curve fits to 175 late-type galaxies from the Spitzer Photometry & Accurate Rotation Curves (SPARC) database using seven dark matter (DM) halo profiles: pseudo-isothermal (pISO), Burkert, Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW), Einasto, Di Cintio (2014, DC14), coreNFW, and a new semi-empirical profile named Lucky13. We marginalize over stellar mass-to-light ratio, galaxy distance, disk inclination, halo concentration and halo mass (and an additional shape parameter for Einasto) using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. We find that cored halo models such as the DC14 and Burkert profiles …
The scalar field dark matter (SFDM) model proposes that galaxies form by condensation of a scalar field (SF) very early in the universe forming Bose-Einstein Condensates (BEC) drops, i.e., in this model haloes of galaxies are gigantic drops of SF. Here big structures form like in the LCDM model, by hierarchy, thus all the predictions of the LCDM model at big scales are reproduced by SFDM. This model predicts that all galaxies must be very similar and exist for bigger redshifts than in the LCDM model. In this work we show that BEC dark matter haloes fit high-resolution rotation curves of a samp…
Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models struggle to match the observations at galactic scales. The tension can be reduced either by dramatic baryonic feedback effects or by modifying the particle physics of CDM. Here, we consider an ultra-light scalar field DM particle manifesting a wave nature below a DM particle mass-dependent Jeans scale. For DM mass $m\sim10^{-22}{\rm eV}$, this scenario delays galaxy formation and avoids cusps in the center of the dark matter haloes. We use new measurements of half-light mass in ultra-faint dwarf galaxies Draco II and Triangulum II to estimate the mass of the DM pa…
We investigate the effects of chameleon scalar field to the effective density and pressure of a dark matter halo. The pressure is generated from the chameleonic fifth force on the matter. We demonstrate that the thick-shell non-singular boundary condition which forbids singular point leads to extremely stringent constraint on the matter-chameleon coupling when applied to galaxy. We argue that chameleon profile with central singularity is more likely to develop in general physical situation. The chameleonic fifth force from the chameleon profile with central singularity experienced by the dark …
We consider the effect of velocity-dependent dark matter annihilation on the angular distribution of gamma rays produced in dark matter subhalos. We assume that the dark matter potential is spherically symmetric, characterized by a scale radius and scale density, and the velocity distribution is isotropic. We find that the effect of velocity-dependent dark matter annihilation is largely determined by dimensional analysis; the angular size of gamma-ray emission from an individual subhalo is rescaled by a factor which depends on the form of the dark matter distribution, but not on the halo param…
We investigate dark and visible matter distribution in the Coma cluster in the case of the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile. A toy model where all galaxies in the cluster are concentrated inside a sphere of an effective radius $R_{\mathrm{eff}}$ is considered. It enables us to obtain the mean velocity dispersion as a function of $R_{\mathrm{eff}}$. We show that, within the observation accuracy of the NFW parameters, the calculated value of $R_{\mathrm{eff}}$ can be rather close to the observable cutoff of the galaxy distribution. Moreover, the comparison of our toy model with the observable d…
Using the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) dark matter density profile we reconstruct an effective field theory model for gravity at large distances from a central object by demanding that the vacuum solution has the same gravitational properties as the NFW density profile has in the context of General Relativity (GR). The dimensionally reduced reconstructed action for gravity leads to a vacuum metric that includes a modified Rindler acceleration term in addition to the Schwarzschild and cosmological constant terms. The new term is free from infrared curvature singularities and leads to a much better…
