Cold dark matter heats up

One of the principal discoveries in modern cosmology is that standard model particles (including baryons, leptons and photons) together comprise only 5% of the mass-energy budget of the Universe. The remaining 95% consists of dark energy and dark matter (DM). Consequently our picture of the universe is known as {Lambda}CDM, with {Lambda} denoting dark energy and CDM cold dark matter. {Lambda}CDM is being challenged by its apparent inability to explain the low density of DM measured at the centre of cosmological systems, ranging from faint dwarf galaxies to massive clusters containing tens of galaxies the size of the Milky Way. But before making conclusions one should carefully include the effect of gas and stars, which were historically seen as merely a passive component during the assembly of galaxies. We now understand that these can in fact significantly alter the DM component, through a coupling based on rapid gravitational potential fluctuations.

The central slope of dark matter cores in dwarf galaxies: Simulations vs. THINGS

We make a direct comparison of the derived dark matter (DM) distributions between hydrodynamical simulations of dwarf galaxies assuming a LCDM cosmology and the observed dwarf galaxies sample from the THINGS survey in terms of (1) the rotation curve shape and (2) the logarithmic inner density slope alpha of mass density profiles. The simulations, which include the effect of baryonic feedback processes, such as gas cooling, star formation, cosmic UV background heating and most importantly physically motivated gas outflows driven by supernovae (SNe), form bulgeless galaxies with DM cores. We show that the stellar and baryonic mass is similar to that inferred from photometric and kinematic methods for galaxies of similar circular velocity. Analyzing the simulations in exactly the same way as the observational sample allows us to address directly the so-called cusp/core problem in the LCDM model. We show that the rotation curves of the simulated dwarf galaxies rise less steeply than CDM rotation curves and are consistent with those of the THINGS dwarf galaxies. The mean value of the logarithmic inner density slopes alpha of the simulated galaxies dark matter density profiles is ~ -0.4 +- 0.1, which shows good agreement with alpha = -0.29 +- 0.07 of the THINGS dwarf galaxies. The effect of non-circular motions is not significant enough to affect the results. This confirms that the baryonic feedback processes included in the simulations are efficiently able to make the initial cusps with alpha ~ -1.0 to -1.5 predicted by dark-matter-only simulations shallower, and induce DM halos with a central mass distribution similar to that observed in nearby dwarf galaxies.