The mass profile and accretion history of cold dark matter haloes

By A. Ludlow, J. Navarro, M. Boylan-Kolchin, P. Bett, R. Angulo, Ming Li, Simon D. M. White, Carlos S. Frenk, Volker Springel. 2013

169 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use the Millennium Simulation series to investigate the relation between the accretion history and mass profile of cold dark matter (CDM) haloes. We find that the mean inner density within the scale radius, r(-2) (where the halo density profile has isothermal slope), is directly proportional to the critical density of the Universe at the time when the virial mass of the main progenitor equals the mass enclosed within r(-2). Scaled to these characteristic values of mass and density, the average mass accretion history, expressed in terms of the critical density of the Universe, M((crit)(z)), resembles that of the enclosed density profile, M( >), at z = 0. Both follow closely the Navarro, Frenk & White (NFW) profile, which suggests that the similarity of halo mass profiles originates from the mass-independence of halo accretion histories. Support for this interpretation is provided by outlier haloes whose accretion histories deviate from the NFW shape; their mass profiles show correlated deviations from NFW and are better approximated by Einasto profiles. Fitting both M( >) and M((crit)) with either NFW or Einasto profiles yield concentration and shape parameters that are correlated, confirming and extending earlier work that has linked the concentration of a halo with its accretion history. These correlations also confirm that halo structure is insensitive to initial conditions: only haloes whose accretion histories differ greatly from the NFW shape show notable deviations from NFW in their mass profiles. As a result, the NFW profile provides acceptable fits to hot dark matter haloes, which do not form hierarchically, and for fluctuation power spectra other than CDM. Our findings, however, predict a subtle but systematic dependence of mass profile shape on accretion history which, if confirmed, would provide strong support for the link between accretion history and halo structure we propose here.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Global and Planetary Change, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/04b43a0ce0f044ecfcc5d1dcbe5908c128b434cf

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Citations in the corpus

The mass–concentration–redshift relation of cold dark matter haloes (2013, methodology): “As discussed above, NFW profiles can also be fit to halo mass accretion histories in order to estimate their “concentration” parameter (Ludlow et al. 2013).”
The flattening of the concentration–mass relation towards low halo masses and its implications for the annihilation signal boost (2013, background): “More importantly, there exists a strong correlation between the inner structural properties of DM halos and their formation epochs (Bullock et al. 2001; Wechler et al. 2002; Macciò, Dutton, & van den Bosch 2008; Zhao et al. 2009; Ludlow et al. 2013).”
The masses and density profiles of halos in a LCDM galaxy formation simulation (2014, background): “…are well fit by the NFW profile (equation 1) at all redshifts down to a few per cent of the virial radius (Navarro et al. 1997, 2004; Bullock et al. 2001; Eke et al. 2001; Shaw et al. 2006; Macciò et al. 2007; Neto et al. 2007; Duffy et al. 2008; Ludlow et al. 2013; Dutton & Macciò 2014).”
The universality of the virial halo mass function and models for non-universality of other halo definitions (2015, background): “Some of the discrepancy may be caused by the fact that not all haloes follow NFW profiles all the way down to the very center (Einasto 1965; Retana-Montenegro et al. 2012; Ludlow et al. 2013; Dutton & Macciò 2014).”
CLASH: JOINT ANALYSIS OF STRONG-LENSING, WEAK-LENSING SHEAR, AND MAGNIFICATION DATA FOR 20 GALAXY CLUSTERS (2015, methodology): “An Einasto profile with αE ≈ 0.18 closely resembles the NFW profile over roughly two decades in radius (Ludlow et al. 2013).”
Cold dark matter haloes in the Planck era: evolution of structural parameters for Einasto and NFW profiles (2014, methodology): “In agreement with Prada et al. (2012), but in disagreement with Ludlow et al. (2013), we find that this relation is not redshift independent.”
A UNIVERSAL MODEL FOR HALO CONCENTRATIONS (2014, background): “As shown in previous studies, the mass dependence of the concentration of halos is a consequence of their MAH (Wechsler et al. 2002; Zhao et al. 2003b, 2009; Ludlow et al. 2013), which, in turn, is determined by the parameters of the background cosmological model.”
The mass–concentration–redshift relation of cold and warm dark matter haloes (2016, background): “…shape (e.g. Navarro et al. 2004; Hayashi & White 2008; Navarro et al. 2010) as well as its slight but systematic dependence on mass (Gao et al. C© 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society 2008; Ludlow et al. 2013; Dutton & Macciò 2014).”
DEPENDENCE OF THE OUTER DENSITY PROFILES OF HALOS ON THEIR MASS ACCRETION RATE (2014, unknown): “The trend with concentration shown in Figure 13 is also apparent in the mass profiles in Figure 7 of Ludlow et al. (2013).”
An Accurate Physical Model for Halo Concentrations (2018, methodology): “Once this growth slows down, the scale radius of the halo approaches a constant value, meaning that the center of the halo remains more or less static in physical coordinates (Bullock et al. 2001; Ludlow et al. 2013).”
CLASH: WEAK-LENSING SHEAR-AND-MAGNIFICATION ANALYSIS OF 20 GALAXY CLUSTERS (2014, methodology): “An Einasto profile with αE ≈ 0.18 closely resembles the NFW profile over roughly two decades in radius (Ludlow et al. 2013).”
The accretion history of dark matter haloes - III. A physical model for the concentration-mass relation (2015, methodology): “This relation was introduced in Ludlow et al. (2013) and explored in L14, who recently presented a related model for the c–”
THE SPLASHBACK RADIUS AS A PHYSICAL HALO BOUNDARY AND THE GROWTH OF HALO MASS (2015, background): “Since the concentration is intimately related to the mass accretion history of a halo (e.g., Ludlow et al. 2013), we expect there to be a relation between Γ and concentration.”