Constraints on the Collisional Nature of the Dark Matter from Gravitational Lensing in the Cluster A2218

2002/07/31 by Priyamvada Natarajan, Abraham Loeb, Jean-Paul Kneib +2 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/345547

published as Astrophys.J. 580 (2002) L17-L20 · minor revisions, ApJ Letters in press, matches print version

arxiv created 2002/10/23 · openalex publication_date 2002/11/04 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

The detailed distribution of mass within clusters of galaxies can be used to probe the nature of dark matter. We show that constraints on the extent of the mass distribution around galaxies in the rich cluster A2218 obtained from combining strong and weak lensing observations are consistent with the predictions that assume that the dominant mass component (dark matter) in these halos is collisionless. A strongly interacting (fluid-like) dark matter is ruled out at a confidence level of more than 5 σ.

Citations

• Evidence for Tidal Stripping of Dark Matter Halos in Massive Cluster Lenses
• Orbital Perturbations of Transiting Planets: A Possible Method to Measure Stellar Quadrupoles and to Detect Earth‐Mass Planets

Cited by

• Formation and evolution of self-interacting dark matter haloes
• Direct Constraints on the Dark Matter Self‐Interaction Cross Section from the Merging Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657−56
• Multiple-images in the cluster lens Abell 2218: Constraining the geometry of the Universe?