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A Universal Density Profile for Dark and Luminous Matter?

2005; IOP Publishing; Volume: 624; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/430636

1538-4357

David Merritt, Julio F. Navarro, Aaron D. Ludlow, Adrian Jenkins,

Scientific Research and Discoveries

We explore similarities in the luminosity distribution of early-type galaxies and the mass profiles of ΛCDM halos. The spatial structure of these systems may be accurately described by a simple law in which the logarithmic slope of the density varies as a power of the radius: the Sérsic law. We show that this law provides a significantly better fit to a set of high-resolution ΛCDM halos than a three-parameter generalization of the Navarro-Frenk-White profile. We discuss possible reasons why the same law should describe dark and luminous systems that span a range of over 7 decades in mass.