No Arabic abstract
Dark matter particles form halos that contribute the major part of the mass of galaxy clusters. The formation of these cosmological structures have been investigated both observationally and in numerical simulations, which have confirmed the existence of a universal mass profile. However, the dynamic behaviour of dark matter in halos is not as well understood. We have used observations of 16 equilibrated galaxy clusters to show that the random velocities of dark matter particles are larger on average along the radial direction than along the tangential, and that the magnitude of this velocity anisotropy is radially varying. Our measurement implies that the collective behaviour of dark matter particles is fundamentally different from that of normal particles and the radial variation of the anisotropy velocity agrees with the predictions of numerical simulation.
Using WMAP 3-year data at the locations of close to $sim 700$ X-ray selected clusters we have detected the amplitude of the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (TSZ) effect at the 15$sigma$ level, the highest statistical significance reported so far. Owing to the large size of our cluster sample, we are able to detect the corresponding CMB distortions out to large cluster-centric radii. The region over which the TSZ signal is detected is, on average, four times larger in radius than the X-ray emitting region, extending to $sim 3h_{70}^{-1}$Mpc. We show that an isothermal $beta$ model does not fit the electron pressure at large radii; instead, the baryon profile is consistent with the Navarro-Frenk-White profile, expected for dark matter in the concordance $Lambda$CDM model. The X-ray temperature at the virial radius of the clusters falls by a factor $sim 3-4$ from the central value, depending on the cluster concentration parameter. Our results suggest that cluster dynamics at large radii is dominated by dark matter and is well described by Newtonian gravity.
Knowledge of the structure of galaxy clusters is essential for an understanding of large scale structure in the universe, and may provide important clues to the nature of dark matter. Moreover, the shape of the dark matter distribution in the cluster core may offer insight into the structure formation process. Unfortunately, cluster cores also tend to be the site of complicated astrophysics. X-ray imaging spectroscopy of relaxed clusters, a standard technique for mapping their dark matter distributions, is often complicated by the presence of cool components in cluster cores, and the dark matter profile one derives for a cluster is sensitive to assumptions made about the distribution of this component. In addition, fluctuations in the temperature measurements resulting from normal statistical variance can produce results which are unphysical. We present here a procedure for extracting the dark matter profile of a spherically symmetric, relaxed galaxy cluster which deals with both of these complications. We apply this technique to a sample of galaxy clusters observed with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and comment on the resulting mass profiles. For some of the clusters we compare their masses with those derived from weak and strong gravitational measurements.
Directional detection of dark matter has sensitivity for both recoil energy and direction of nuclear recoil. It opens the way to measure local velocity distribution of dark matter. In this paper, we study possibility to discriminate isotropic distribution and anisotropic one suggested by a N-body simulation with directional detector. Numerical simulation is performed for two cases according to the detectors, one corresponds to angular histogram and the other is energy-angular distribution of the signals. We reveal that the anisotropy of velocity distribution can be discriminated at 90% C.L. with chi-squared test if O($10^4$) signals are obtained.
Large-scale faint structure detected by the recent observations in the halo of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) provides an attractive window to explore the structure of outer cold dark matter (CDM) halo in M31. Using an N-body simulation of the interaction between an accreting satellite galaxy and M31, we investigate the mass density profile of the CDM halo. We find the sufficient condition of the outer density profile of CDM halo in M31 to reproduce the Andromeda giant stream and the shells at the east and west sides of M31. The result indicates that the density profile of the outer dark matter halo of M31 is a steeper than the prediction of the theory of the structure formation based on the CDM model.
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 not much effort has examined this hypothesis. In the halo of the Andromeda galaxy (M31), large-scale stellar structures detected by the recent observations provide a potentially suitable window to investigate the mass--density distribution of the dark matter halo. We explore the density structure of the dark matter halo in M31 using an N-body simulation of the interaction between an accreting satellite galaxy and M31. To reproduce the Andromeda Giant Southern Stream and the stellar shells at the east and west sides of M31, we find the sufficient condition for the power-law index $alpha$ of the outer density distribution of the dark matter halo. The best-fit parameter is $alpha=-3.7$, which is steeper than the CDM prediction.