A Test of the Collisional Dark Matter Hypothesis from Cluster Lensing

By J. Miralda-Escudé. 2000

168 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Spergel & Steinhardt proposed the possibility that dark matter particles are self-interacting as a solution to two discrepancies between the predictions of cold dark matter models and observations: First, the observed dark matter distribution in some dwarf galaxies has large, constant-density cores, as opposed to the predicted central cusps; and second, small satellites of normal galaxies are much less abundant than predicted. The dark matter self-interaction would produce isothermal cores in halos and expel the dark matter particles from dwarfs orbiting in large halos. Another consequence of the model is that halos should become spherical once most particles have interacted. Several observations show that the mass distribution in relaxed clusters of galaxies is elliptical. Here, I discuss in particular gravitational lensing in the cluster MS 2137-23, where the ellipticity of the dark matter distribution can be measured to a small radius, r ~ 70 kpc, suggesting that most dark matter particles in clusters outside this radius do not collide during the characteristic age of clusters. If true, this implies that any dark matter self-interaction with a cross section independent of velocity is too weak to have affected the observed density profiles in the dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxies, or to have facilitated the destruction of dwarf satellites in galactic halos. If sx is the cross section and mx the mass of the dark matter particle, then sx/mx < 10-25.5 cm2 GeV-1.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3580b8c91bccd8c5285f543ff36172b474edb98a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

Colliding clusters and dark matter self-interactions (2013, background): “…different astrophysical systems (Yoshida et al. 2000; Dave et al. 2001; Firmani et al. 2001; Gnedin E-mail: felix.kahlhoefer@physics.ox.ac.uk & Ostriker 2001; Hennawi & Ostriker 2002; Miralda-Escude 2002; Markevitch et al. 2004; Boehm & Schaeffer 2005; Sánchez-Salcedo 2005; Randall et al. 2008).”
The impact of baryonic physics on the structure of dark matter haloes: the view from the FIRE cosmological simulations (2015, methodology): “Simple SIDM models (Carlson et al. 1992; Machacek et al. 1993; de Laix et al. 1995) were shown to violate observations of central regions of galaxy clusters (Miralda-Escudé 2002; Yoshida et al. 2000) that are found to be denser and more elliptical than SIDM would predict.”
Creation of cosmic structure in the complex galaxy cluster merger Abell 2744 (2011, background): “Additional constraints on the collisional cross-section have also recently been ob- tained from dark matter stripping in Abell 3827 (Williams & Saha 2011; Carrasco et al. 2010) and the ellipticities of dark matter halos (Miralda-Escudé 2002), with implications discussed in Feng et al. (2010).”
Gravitational lensing (2010, background): “Such a self-interaction would act as a source of isotropic pressure and thus symmetrize and smooth mass distributions [342].”
Double-Disk Dark Matter (2013, background): “One bound of this type arises from the halo for the galaxy cluster MS 2137-23 [31], which is measured by gravitational lensing to show a 20% deviation from axial symmetry at radius 70 kpc from the center.”
Strong-Lensing Analysis of A1689 from Deep Advanced Camera Images (2004, background): “Other more radical suggestions include self-interacting dark matter (Spergel & Steindhardt 2000), for which the largest deviations should occur at high density, and hence this idea is amenable to investigation via strong lensing (Miralda-Escudé 2002).”
Dark Matter Candidates from Particle Physics and Methods of Detection (2010, background): “The existence of elliptical dark matter halos may therefore also constrain self-interactions (220).”
The Dark Matter Distribution in the Central Regions of Galaxy Clusters: Implications for Cold Dark Matter (2003, result): “Nevertheless, previous analyses of two of the clusters (Abell 383 and MS 2137-23) does reveal that they are not perfectly circular in projection (e.g. S01; Miralda-Escudé 2002).”
Subhaloes in self-interacting galactic dark matter haloes (2012, methodology): “…abandoned since those that could solve the small-scale CDM problems seemed to violate several astrophysical constraints, such as the observed ellipticity of the mass distribution of galaxy clusters (e.g. Miralda-Escudé 2002) and the survivability of satellite haloes (e.g. Gnedin & Ostriker 2001).”
Cosmological Simulations with Self-Interacting Dark Matter I: Constant Density Cores and Substructure (2012, background): “These concerns were echoed by Miralda-Escudé (2002) who suggested that SIDM halos would be significantly more spherical than observed for galaxy clusters.”
Cosmological Parameters from Observations of Galaxy Clusters (2011, methodology): “Miralda-Escudé (2002) use constraints on the ellipticity in the central regions of MS 2137.3-2353 to infer σ/m 0.02 cm2 g−1.”
Numerical simulations of the dark universe: State of the art and the next decade (2012, background): “ticity of the mass distribution of galaxy clusters [298] and the survivability of satellite halos [299].”
The Cosmological Constant and Dark Energy (2002, background): “But Miralda-Escudé (2002) points out that the collisions would tend to make the velocity distribution isotropic, contrary to the evidence for ellipsoidal distributions of dark matter in clusters of galaxies.”
Constraints on the Self-Interaction Cross Section of Dark Matter from Numerical Simulations of the Merging Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657–56 (2007, background): “Earlier studies have found stringent upper limits on /m, inconsistentwith the above range (e.g.,Yoshida et al. 2000a;Hennawi & Ostriker 2002; Miralda-Escudé 2002; although see also Sand et al. 2002; Sánchez-Salcedo 2005).”
The unexpected diversity of dwarf galaxy rotation curves (2015, background): “SIDM has fallen somewhat out of favour because of concerns that it may fail to account for the central dark matter density profiles of galaxy clusters (Miralda-Escudé 2002) or that it would lead to the dissolution of individual galaxies in clusters (Gnedin & Ostriker 2001).”