Baryon-driven decontraction in Milky Way-mass haloes Forouhar Moreno, Victor J; Benítez-Llambay, Alejandro; Cole, Shaun ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
02/2022, Letnik:
511, Številka:
3
Journal Article
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ABSTRACT
We select a sample of Milky Way (MW) mass haloes from a high-resolution version of the EAGLE simulation to study their inner dark matter (DM) content and how baryons alter it. As in previous ...studies, we find that all haloes are more massive at the centre compared to their dark matter-only (DMO) counterparts at the present day as a result of the dissipational collapse of baryons during the assembly of the galaxy. However, we identify two processes that can reduce the central halo mass during the evolution of the galaxy. First, gas blowouts induced by active galactic nuclei feedback can lead to a substantial decrease of the central DM mass. Secondly, the formation of a stellar bar and its interaction with the DM can induce a secular expansion of the halo; the rate at which DM is evacuated from the central region by this process is related to the average bar strength, and the time-scale on which it acts determines how much the halo has decontracted. Although the inner regions of the haloes we have investigated are still more massive than their DMO counterparts at z = 0, they are significantly less massive than in the past and less massive than expected from the classic adiabatic contraction model. Since the MW has both a central supermassive black hole and a bar, the extent to which its halo has contracted is uncertain. This may affect estimates of the mass of the MW halo and of the expected signals in direct and indirect DM detection experiments.
Galactic satellite systems in CDM, WDM and SIDM Forouhar Moreno, Victor J; Benítez-Llambay, Alejandro; Cole, Shaun ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
11/2022, Letnik:
517, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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ABSTRACT
We investigate the population of bright satellites ($M_{*} \ge 10^{5} \, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$) of haloes of mass comparable to that of the Milky Way in cosmological simulations in which the ...dark matter (DM) is either cold, warm, or self-interacting (CDM, WDM, and SIDM, respectively). The nature of the DM gives rise to differences in the abundance and structural properties of field haloes. In WDM, the main feature is a reduction in the total number of galaxies that form, reflecting a suppression of low-mass DM haloes and lower galaxy formation efficiency compared to CDM. For SIDM, the changes are structural, restricted to the central regions of haloes and dependent on the assumed self-interaction cross-section. We also consider different baryonic subgrid physics models for galaxy formation, in which supernova gas blowouts can or cannot induce the formation of a core in dwarf galaxies. Overall, the inclusion of baryons lessen the differences in the halo properties in the different DM models compared to DM-only simulations. This affects the satellite properties at infall and therefore their subsequent tidal stripping and survival rates. None the less, we find slightly less concentrated satellite radial distributions as the SIDM cross-section increases. Unfortunately, we also find that the satellite populations in simulations with baryon-induced cores in CDM and WDM can mimic the results found in SIDM, making the satellite stellar mass and maximum circular velocity functions heavily degenerate on the assumed nature of the DM and the adopted subgrid modelling. These degeneracies preclude using the brightest satellites of the Milky Way to constrain the nature of DM.
Galactic stellar haloes are largely composed of the remnants of galaxies accreted during the assembly of their host galaxies, and hence their properties reflect the mass spectrum and post-accretion ...evolution of their satellites. As the nature of dark matter (DM) can affect both, we explore how the properties of the accreted stellar component vary across cold (CDM), warm (WDM) and self-interacting (SIDM) models. We do this by studying accreted stellar populations around eight MW-mass haloes using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations based on the EAGLE galaxy formation model, in which we find that the accreted stellar mass remains similar across models. Contrary to WDM, which only presents minor differences relative to CDM, the distribution of accreted stars in SIDM changes significantly within \(0.05R_{200}\) (\(10\,\mathrm{kpc}\)). The central density reduces to \(\langle \rho^{\mathrm{SIDM}}_{\mathrm{exsitu}} / \rho^{\mathrm{CDM}}_{\mathrm{exsitu}} \rangle = 0.3\) and has a shallower radial dependence, with logarithmic density slopes of \(\langle \alpha_{\mathrm{SIDM}} \rangle = -1.4\) vs \(\langle \alpha_{\mathrm{CDM}} \rangle = -1.7\). Additionally, stars are on more tangential orbits than their CDM counterparts, with a change in the velocity anisotropy of \(\langle \Delta \beta \rangle = - 0.2\). Finally, SIDM stellar haloes have the largest number and prominence of overdensities in radius vs radial velocity space. This is due to a combination of shorter stellar halo progenitor merging timescales and shallower host potentials, with the former resulting in less time for dynamical friction and radialisation to operate. In summary, we show that the phase-space structure of Galactic stellar haloes encode key information that can be used to distinguish and rule out different DM models.
We investigate the population of bright satellites (\(M_{*} \geq 10^{5} \mathrm{M}_{\odot}\)) of haloes of mass comparable to that of the Milky Way in cosmological simulations in which the dark ...matter (DM) is either cold, warm or self-interacting (CDM, WDM and SIDM respectively). The nature of the DM gives rise to differences in the abundance and structural properties of field halos. In WDM, the main feature is a reduction in the total number of galaxies that form, reflecting a suppression of low-mass DM haloes and lower galaxy formation efficiency compared to CDM. For SIDM, the changes are structural, restricted to the central regions of haloes and dependent on the assumed self-interaction cross-section. We also consider different baryonic subgrid physics models for galaxy formation, in which supernova gas blowouts can or cannot induce the formation of a core in dwarf galaxies. Overall, the inclusion of baryons lessen the differences in the halo properties in the different DM models compared to DM-only simulations. This affects the satellite properties at infall and therefore their subsequent tidal stripping and survival rates. Nonetheless, we find slightly less concentrated satellite radial distributions as the SIDM cross-section increases. Unfortunately, we also find that the satellite populations in simulations with baryon-induced cores in CDM and WDM can mimic the results found in SIDM, making the satellite stellar mass and maximum circular velocity functions heavily degenerate on the assumed nature of the DM and the adopted subgrid modelling. These degeneracies preclude using the brightest satellites of the Milky Way to constrain the nature of DM.
Galaxy clusters provide an avenue to expand our knowledge of cosmology and galaxy evolution. Because it is difficult to accurately measure the total mass of a large number of individual clusters, ...cluster samples are typically selected using an observable proxy for mass. Selection effects are therefore a key problem in understanding galaxy cluster statistics. We make use of the \((2.8~\rm{Gpc})^3\) FLAMINGO hydrodynamical simulation to investigate how selection based on X-ray luminosity, thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect or galaxy richness influences the halo mass distribution. We define our selection cuts based on the median value of the observable at a fixed mass and compare the resulting samples to a mass-selected sample. We find that all samples are skewed towards lower mass haloes. For X-ray luminosity and richness cuts below a critical value, scatter dominates over the trend with mass and the median mass becomes biased increasingly low with respect to a mass-selected sample. At \(z\leq0.5\), observable cuts corresponding to median halo masses between \(M_\text{500c}=10^{14}\) and \(10^{15}~\rm{M_{\odot}}\) give nearly unbiased median masses for all selection methods, but X-ray selection results in biased medians for higher masses. For cuts corresponding to median masses \(<10^{14}\) at \(z\leq0.5\) and for all masses at \(z\geq1\), only Compton-Y selection yields nearly unbiased median masses. Importantly, even when the median mass is unbiased, the scatter is not because for each selection the sample is skewed towards lower masses than a mass-selected sample. Each selection leads to a different bias in secondary quantities like cool-core fraction, temperature and gas fraction.
We select a sample of Milky Way (MW) mass haloes from a high-resolution version of the EAGLE simulation to study their inner dark matter (DM) content and how baryons alter it. As in previous studies, ...we find that all haloes are more massive at the centre compared to their DM-only (DMO) counterparts at the present day as a result of the dissipational collapse of baryons during the assembly of the galaxy. However, we identify two processes that can reduce the central halo mass during the evolution of the galaxy. Firstly, gas blowouts induced by AGN feedback can lead to a substantial decrease of the central DM mass. Secondly, the formation of a stellar bar and its interaction with the DM can induce a secular expansion of the halo; the rate at which DM is evacuated from the central region by this process is related to the average bar strength and the timescale on which it acts determines how much the halo has decontracted. Although the inner regions of the haloes we have investigated are still more massive than their DMO counterparts at \(z = 0\), they are significantly less massive than in the past and less massive than expected from the classic adiabatic contraction model. Since the MW has both a central supermassive black hole and a bar, the extent to which its halo has contracted is uncertain. This may affect estimates of the mass of the MW halo and of the expected signals in direct and indirect DM detection experiments.