Testing $Lambda$CDM With Dwarf Galaxy Morphology


Abstract in English

The leading tensions to the collisionless cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm are the small-scale controversies, discrepancies between observations at the dwarf-galactic scale and their simulational counterparts. In this work we consider methods to infer 3D morphological information on Local Group dwarf spheroidals, and test the fitness of CDM+hydrodynamics simulations to the observed galaxy shapes. We find that the subpopulation of dwarf galaxies with mass-to-light ratio $gtrsim 100 M_odot/L_odot$ reflects an oblate morphology. This is discrepant with the dwarf galaxies with mass-to-light ratio $lesssim 100 M_odot/L_odot$, which reflect prolate morphologies, and more importantly with simulations of CDM-sourced galaxies which are explicitly prolate. Although more simulations and data are called for, if evidence of oblate pressure-supported stellar distributions persists, we argue that an underlying oblate non-CDM dark matter halo may be required, and present this as motivation for future studies.

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