The shapes of dark matter dominated dwarf spheroidal stellar density profiles

2001/07/31 by Kris Sigurdson, Neil Turok
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05710.x

published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 336 (2002) 151 · 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, version published in MNRAS

openalex publication_date 2002/10/01 · arxiv created 2004/04/24 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

A Bayesian likelihood analysis of the stellar density profile shapes of several dark matter dominated Galactic dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) has been completed. This analysis indicates that the inner power law, ρ∝r−γ, of each of these profiles satisfies γ < 1.21 at greater than 99 per cent confidence, with a slight preference for γ∼ 0.7. Speculating that this bound on the stellar profiles may be related to the inner power law of the underlying dark matter distribution reveals a statistical discrepancy with the values favoured by recent N-body simulations of cold dark matter (CDM), γCDM∼ 1.4 – 1.5.

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