The mass–concentration–redshift relation of cold and warm dark matter haloes

2016/01/31 by Aaron D. Ludlow, Sownak Bose, Raúl E. Angulo +5 · 12 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Cold dark matter #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Dark matter halo #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Halo #Hot dark matter #Physics #Redshift #Reionization #Virial theorem #Warm dark matter #astro-ph.CO

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stw1046

21 pages, 16 figures

openalex publication_date 2016/05/03 · arxiv created 2016/05/10 · arxiv updated 2016/05/11 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We use a suite of cosmological simulations to study the mass–concentration–redshift relation, c(M, z), of dark matter haloes. Our simulations include standard Λ-cold dark matter (CDM) models, and additional runs with truncated power spectra, consistent with a thermal warm dark matter (WDM) scenario. We find that the mass profiles of CDM and WDM haloes are self-similar and well approximated by the Einasto profile. The c(M, z) relation of CDM haloes is monotonic: concentrations decrease with increasing virial mass at fixed redshift, and decrease with increasing redshift at fixed mass. The mass accretion histories (MAHs) of CDM haloes are also scale-free, and can be used to infer concentrations directly. These results do not apply to WDM haloes: their MAHs are not scale-free because of the characteristic scale imposed by the power spectrum suppression. Further, the WDM c(M, z) relation is non-monotonic: concentrations peak at a mass scale dictated by the truncation scale, and decrease at higher and lower masses. We show that the assembly history of a halo can still be used to infer its concentration, provided that the total mass of its progenitors is considered (the ‘collapsed mass history’; CMH), rather than just that of its main ancestor. This exploits the scale-free nature of CMHs to derive a simple scaling that reproduces the mass–concentration–redshift relation of both CDM and WDM haloes over a vast range of halo masses and redshifts. Our model therefore provides a robust account of the mass, redshift, cosmology and power spectrum dependence of dark matter halo concentrations.

Citations

• Halos and galaxies in the standard cosmological model: results from the Bolshoi simulation
• Merger histories in warm dark matter structure formation scenarios
• On the origin of cold dark matter halo density profiles
• The impact of mergers on relaxed X-ray clusters – I. Dynamical evolution and emergent transient structures
• Mass and Redshift Dependence of Dark Halo Structure
• The spin and shape of dark matter haloes in the Millennium simulation of a Λ cold dark matter universe
• The Aquarius Project: the subhaloes of galactic haloes
• Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars

Cited by

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• Addressing the too big to fail problem with baryon physics and sterile neutrino dark matter
• Probing Cosmology with Dark Matter Halo Sparsity Using X-Ray Cluster Mass Measurements
• Host Dark Matter Halos of SDSS Red and Blue Quasars: No Significant Difference in Large-scale Environment
• A dark matter profile to model diverse feedback-induced core sizes of ΛCDM haloes
• A fresh look into the interacting dark matter scenario
• CLUMP-3D: Testing ΛCDM with Galaxy Cluster Shapes
• Power of halometry
• Einasto Profiles and the Dark Matter Power Spectrum
• Zooming into the Cosmic Horseshoe: new insights on the lens profile and the source shape
• Halo and subhalo demographics with Planck cosmological parameters: Bolshoi–Planck and MultiDark–Planck simulations
• Constraining sterile neutrino cosmologies with strong gravitational lensing observations at redshift z ∼ 0.2