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HALO DENSITY REDUCTION BY BARYONIC SETTLING?

2009; IOP Publishing; Volume: 691; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1088/0004-637x/691/2/1300

1538-4357

John R. Jardel, J. A. Sellwood,

Astronomy and Astrophysical Research

We test the proposal by El-Zant et al. that the dark matter density of halos could be reduced through dynamical friction acting on heavy baryonic clumps in the early stages of galaxy formation. Using N-body simulations, we confirm that the inner halo density cusp is flattened to 0.2 of the halo break radius by the settling of a single clump of mass ≳0.5% of the halo mass. We also find that an ensemble of 50 clumps, each having masses ≳0.2%, can flatten the cusp to almost the halo break radius on a timescale of ∼9 Gyr, for a Navarro–Frenk–White profile halo of concentration 15. We summarize some of the difficulties that need to be overcome if this mechanism is to resolve the apparent conflict between the observed inner densities of galaxy halos and the predictions of ΛCDM.