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Register a new userThe galaxy population in cold and warm dark matter cosmologies
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We use a pair of high resolution N-body simulations implementing two dark matter models, namely the standard cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogony and a warm dark matter (WDM) alternative where the dark matter particle is a 1.5keV thermal relic. We combine these simulations with the GALFORM semi-analytical galaxy formation model in order to explore differences between the resulting galaxy populations. We use GALFORM model variants for CDM and WDM that result in the same z=0 galaxy stellar mass function by construction. We find that most of the studied galaxy properties have the same values in these two models, indicating that both dark matter scenarios match current observational data equally well. Even in under-dense regions, where discrepancies in structure formation between CDM and WDM are expected to be most pronounced, the galaxy properties are only slightly different. The only significant difference in the local universe we find is in the galaxy populations of Local Volumes, regions of radius 1 to 8Mpc around simulated Milky Way analogues. In such regions our WDM model provides a better match to observed local galaxy number counts and is five times more likely than the CDM model to predict sub-regions within them that are as empty as the observed Local Void. Thus, a highly complete census of the Local Volume and future surveys of void regions could provide constraints on the nature of dark matter.
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The nature of the dark matter can affect the collapse time of dark matter haloes, and can therefore be imprinted in observables such as the stellar population ages and star formation histories of dwarf galaxies. In this paper we use high resolution hydrodynamical simulations of Local Group-analogue (LG) volumes in cold dark matter (CDM), sterile neutrino warm dark matter (WDM) and self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) models with the EAGLE galaxy formation code to study how galaxy formation times change with dark matter model. We are able to identify the same haloes in different simulations, since they share the same initial density field phases. We find that the stellar mass of galaxies depends systematically on resolution, and can differ by as much as a factor of two in haloes of a given dark matter mass. The evolution of the stellar populations in SIDM is largely identical to that of CDM, but in WDM early star formation is instead suppressed. The time at which LG haloes can begin to form stars through atomic cooling is delayed by $sim$200~Myr in WDM models compared to CDM. It will be necessary to measure stellar ages of old populations to a precision of better than 100~Myr, and to address degeneracies with the redshift of reionization -- and potentially other baryonic processes -- in order to use these observables to distinguish between dark matter models.
By means of N-body+Hydrodynamic zoom-in simulations we study the evolution of the inner dark matter and stellar mass distributions of central dwarf galaxies formed in halos of virial masses Mv=2-3x10^10 Msun at z=0, both in a WDM and CDM cosmology. The half-mode mass in the WDM power spectrum of our simulations is Mf= 2x 10^10 Msun. In the dark matter only simulations halo density profiles are well described by the NFW parametric fit in both cosmologies, though the WDM halos have concentrations lower by factors 1.5--2.0 than their CDM counterparts. In the hydrodynamic simulations, the effects of baryons significantly flatten the inner density, velocity dispersion, and pseudo phase-space density profiles of the WDM halos but not of the CDM ones. The density slope measured at ~ 0.02xRv, alpha, becomes shallow in periods of 2 to 5 Gyr in the WDM runs. We explore whether this flattening process correlates with the global SF, Ms/Mv ratio, gas outflow, and internal specific angular momentum histories. We do not find any clear trends but when alpha is shallower than -0.5, Ms/Mv is always between 0.25 and 1%. We conclude that the main reason of the formation of the shallow core is the presence of strong gas mass fluctuations inside the inner halo, which are a consequence of the feedback driven by a very bursty and sustained SF history in shallow gravitational potentials. Our WDM halos, which assemble late and are less concentrated than the CDM ones, obey these conditions. There are also (rare) CDM systems with extended mass assembly histories that obey these conditions and form indeed shallow cores. The dynamical heating and expansion processes, behind the DM core flattening, apply also to the stars in a such a way that the stellar age and metallicity gradients of the dwarfs are softened, their stellar half-mass radii strongly grow with time, and their central surface densities decrease.
We study the impact of a warm dark matter (WDM) cosmology on dwarf galaxy formation through a suite of cosmological hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations of $M_{rm halo} approx10^{10},M_{odot}$ dark matter halos as part of the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project. A main focus of this paper is to evaluate the combined effects of dark matter physics and stellar feedback on the well-known small-scale issues found in cold dark matter (CDM) models. We find that the $z=0$ stellar mass of a galaxy is strongly correlated with the central density of its host dark matter halo at the time of formation, $z_{rm f}$, in both CDM and WDM models. WDM halos follow the same $M_{star}(z=0)-V_{rm max}(z_{rm f})$ relation as in CDM, but they form later, are less centrally dense, and therefore contain galaxies that are less massive than their CDM counterparts. As a result, the impact of baryonic effects on the central gravitational potential is typically diminished relative to CDM. However, the combination of delayed formation in WDM and energy input from stellar feedback results in dark matter profiles with lower overall densities. The WDM galaxies studied here have a wider diversity of star formation histories (SFHs) than the same systems simulated in CDM, and the two lowest $M_{star}$ WDM galaxies form all of their stars at late times. The discovery of young ultra-faint dwarf galaxies with no ancient star formation -- which do not exist in our CDM simulations -- would therefore provide evidence in support of WDM.
We analyze the total and baryonic acceleration profiles of a set of well-resolved galaxies identified in the EAGLE suite of hydrodynamic simulations. Our runs start from the same initial conditions but adopt different prescriptions for unresolved stellar and AGN feedback, resulting in diverse populations of galaxies by the present day. Some of them reproduce observed galaxy scaling relations, while others do not. However, regardless of the feedback implementation, all of our galaxies follow closely a simple relationship between the total and baryonic acceleration profiles, consistent with recent observations of rotationally supported galaxies. The relation has small scatter: different feedback implementations -- which produce different galaxy populations -- mainly shift galaxies along the relation, rather than perpendicular to it. Furthermore, galaxies exhibit a characteristic acceleration, $g_{dagger}$, above which baryons dominate the mass budget, as observed. These observations, consistent with simple modified Newtonian dynamics, can be accommodated within the standard cold dark matter paradigm.
We perform a series of controlled N-body simulations to study realizations of the recently discovered Antlia 2 galaxy in cold dark matter (CDM) and self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) scenarios. Our simulations contain six benchmark models, where we vary the initial halo concentration and the self-scattering cross section. We adopt well-motivated initial stellar and halo masses, and our fiducial orbit has a small pericenter. After evolving in the Milky Ways tidal field, the simulated galaxies experience significant mass loss and their stellar distributions expand accordingly. These tidal effects are more prominent if the initial halo concentration is lower and if the self-scattering cross section is larger. Our results show that Antlia 2-like galaxies could be realized in CDM if the halo concentration is low and the stellar distribution is diffuse at the infall time, while these conditions could be relaxed in SIDM. We also find all the simulated galaxies predict approximately the same stellar velocity dispersion after imposing selection criteria for stellar particles. This has important implications for testing dark matter models using tidally disturbed systems.
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