No Arabic abstract
We use numerical simulations to investigate how the statistical properties of dark matter (DM) haloes are affected by the baryonic processes associated with galaxy formation. We focus on how these processes influence the spin and shape of a large number of DM haloes covering a wide range of mass scales, from galaxies to clusters at redshifts zero and one, extending to dwarf galaxies at redshift two. The haloes are extracted from the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations, a suite of state-of-the-art high-resolution cosmological simulations run with a range of feedback prescriptions. We find that the median spin parameter in DM-only simulations is independent of mass, redshift and cosmology. At z=0 baryons increase the spin of the DM in the central region (<=0.25 r_200) by up to 30 per cent when feedback is weak or absent. This increase can be attributed to the transfer of angular momentum from baryons to the DM, but is no longer present at z=2. We also present fits to the mass dependence of the DM halo shape at both low and high redshift. At z=0 the sphericity (triaxiality) is negatively (positively) correlated with halo mass and both results are independent of cosmology. Interestingly, these mass-dependent trends are markedly weaker at z=2. While the cooling of baryons acts to make the overall DM halo more spherical, stronger feedback prescriptions tend to reduce the impact of baryons by reducing the central halo mass concentration. More generally, we demonstrate a strongly positive (negative) correlation between halo sphericity (triaxiality) and galaxy formation efficiency, with the latter measured using the central halo baryon fraction. In conclusion, our results suggest that the effects of baryons on the DM halo spin and shape are minor when the effects of cooling are mitigated, as required by realistic models of galaxy formation, although they remain significant for the inner halo.
We quantify the impact of galaxy formation on dark matter halo shapes using cosmological simulations at redshift $z=0$. The haloes are drawn from the IllustrisTNG project, a suite of magneto-hydrodynamic simulations of galaxies. We focus on haloes of mass $10^{10-14} M_odot$ from the 50-Mpc (TNG50) and 100-Mpc (TNG100) boxes, and compare them to dark matter-only (DMO) analogues and other simulations e.g. NIHAO and Eagle. We further quantify the prediction uncertainty by varying the baryonic feedback models in a series of smaller 25 Mpc $h^{-1}$ boxes. We find that: (i) galaxy formation results in rounder haloes compared to the DMO simulations, in qualitative agreement with past hydrodynamic models. Haloes of mass $approx 2times 10^{12} M_odot$ are most spherical, with an average minor-to-major axis ratio of $left< s right> approx 0.75$ in the inner halo, an increase of 40 per cent compared to their DMO counterparts. No significant change in halo shape is found for low-mass $10^{10} M_odot$ haloes; (ii) stronger feedback, e.g. increasing galactic wind speed, reduces the impact of baryons; (iii) the inner halo shape correlates with the stellar mass fraction, which can explain the dependence of halo shapes on different feedback models; (iv) the fiducial and weaker feedback models are most consistent with observational estimates of the Milky Way halo shape. Yet, at fixed halo mass, very diverse and possibly unrealistic feedback models all predict inner halo shapes that are closer to one another than to the DMO results. This implies that a larger observational sample would be required to statistically distinguish between different baryonic prescriptions due to large halo-to-halo variation in halo shapes.
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 separately. We also measure the azimuthal dependence of the distribution of physically associated galaxies around the lens samples. We find that these satellites preferentially reside near the major axis of the lenses, and constrain the angle between the major axis of the lens and the average location of the satellites to <theta>=43.7 deg +/- 0.3 deg for the `all lenses, <theta>=41.7 deg +/- 0.5 deg for the `red lenses and <theta>=42.0 deg +/- 1.4 deg for the `blue lenses. For the `all sample, we find that the anisotropy of the galaxy-mass cross-correlation function <f-f_45>=0.23 +/- 0.12, providing weak support for the view that the average galaxy is embedded in, and preferentially aligned with, a triaxial dark matter halo. Assuming an elliptical Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile, we find that the ratio of the dark matter halo ellipticity and the galaxy ellipticity f_h=e_h/e_g=1.50+1.03-1.01, which for a mean lens ellipticity of 0.25 corresponds to a projected halo ellipticity of e_h=0.38+0.26-0.25 if the halo and the lens are perfectly aligned. For isolated galaxies of the `all sample, the average shear anisotropy increases to <f-f_45>=0.51+0.26-0.25 and f_h=4.73+2.17-2.05, whilst for clustered galaxies the signal is consistent with zero. (abridged)
We present results based on Chandra observations of a large sample of 129 hot galaxy clusters. We measure the concentration parameter c_200, the dark mass M_200 and the baryonic mass content in all the objects of our sample, providing the largest dataset of mass parameters for galaxy clusters in the redshift range z = 0.01 - 1.4. We confirm a that a tight correlation between c_200 and M_200, c propto M^a_vir /(1+z)^b with a = -0.56 +/- 0.15 and b =0.80 +/- 0.25 (68 per cent confidence limits), is present, in good agreement with the predictions from numerical simulations and previous observations. Fitting the mass profile with a generalized NFW model, we got the inner slope alpha, with alpha = 0.94 +/- 0.13. Finally, we show that the inner slope of the density profile, alpha correlates with the baryonic mass content, M_b : namely alpha is decreasing with increasing baryonic mass content.
The spatial and velocity distributions of dark matter particles in the Milky Way Halo affect the signals expected to be observed in searches for dark matter. Results from direct detection experiments are often analyzed assuming a simple isothermal distribution of dark matter, the Standard Halo Model (SHM). Yet there has been skepticism regarding the validity of this simple model due to the complicated gravitational collapse and merger history of actual galaxies. In this paper we compare the SHM to the results of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation to investigate whether or not the SHM is a good representation of the true WIMP distribution in the analysis of direct detection data. We examine two Milky Way-like galaxies from the MaGICC cosmological simulations (a) with dark matter only and (b) with baryonic physics included. The inclusion of baryons drives the shape of the DM halo to become more spherical and makes the velocity distribution of dark matter particles less anisotropic especially at large heliocentric velocities, thereby making the SHM a better fit. We also note that we do not find a significant disk-like rotating dark matter component in either of the two galaxy halos with baryons that we examine, suggesting that dark disks are not a generic prediction of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. We conclude that in the Solar neighborhood, the SHM is in fact a good approximation to the true dark matter distribution in these cosmological simulations (with baryons) which are reasonable representations of the Milky Way, and hence can also be used for the purpose of dark matter direct detection calculations.
Rotation curves of galaxies show a wide range of shapes, which can be paramaterized as scatter in Vrot(1kpc)/Vmax i.e.the ratio of the rotation velocity measured at 1kpc and the maximum measured rotation velocity. We examine whether the observed scatter can be accounted for by combining scatters in disc scale-lengths, the concentration-halo mass relation, and the M*-Mhalo relation. We use these scatters to create model galaxy populations; when housed within dark matter halos that have universal, NFW density profiles, the model does not match the lowest observed values of Vrot(1kpc)/Vmax and has too little scatter in Vrot(1kpc)/Vmax compared to observations. By contrast, a model using a mass dependent dark matter profile, where the inner slope is determined by the ratio of M*/Mhalo, produces galaxies with low values of Vrot(1kpc)/Vmax and a much larger scatter, both in agreement with observation. We conclude that the large observed scatter in Vrot(1kpc)/Vmax favours density profiles that are significantly affected by baryonic processes. Alternative dark matter core formation models such as SIDM may also account for the observed variation in rotation curve shapes, but these observations may provide important constraints in terms of core sizes, and whether they vary with halo mass and/or merger history.