Galaxy-induced transformation of dark matter haloes

By M. Abadi, J. Navarro, Mark A. Fardal, Arif Babul, Matthias Steinmetz. 2009

199 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use N-body/gasdynamical cosmological simulations to examine the effect of the assembly of a central galaxy on the shape and mass profile of its surrounding dark matter halo. Two series of simulations are compared; one that follows only the evolution of the dark matter com- ponent of individual haloes in the propercold dark matter (� CDM) cosmological context, and a second series where a baryonic component is added and followed hydrodynamically. The simulations with baryons include radiative cooling but neglect the formation of stars and their feedback. The efficient, unimpeded cooling that results leads most baryons to collect at the halo centre in a centrifugally supported disc which, due to angular momentum losses, is too small and too massive when compared with typical spiral galaxies. This admittedly unrealistic model allows us, nevertheless, to gauge the maximum effect that galaxies may have in transforming their surrounding dark haloes. We find, in agreement with earlier work, that the shape of the halo becomes more axisymmetric: post galaxy assembly, haloes are trans- formed from triaxial into essentially oblate systems, with well-aligned isopotential contours of roughly constant flattening (� c/a �∼ 0.85). Haloes always contract as a result of galaxy assembly, but the effect is substantially less pronounced than predicted by the traditional 'adiabatic-contraction' hypothesis. The reduced contraction helps to reconcileCDM haloes with constraints on the dark matter content inside the solar circle and should alleviate the longstanding difficulty of matching simultaneously the scaling properties of galaxy discs and the galaxy luminosity function. The halo contraction we report is also less pronounced than found in earlier simulations, a disagreement which suggests that halo contraction is not solely a function of the initial and final distribution of baryons. Not only how much baryonic mass has been deposited at the centre of a halo matters, but also the mode of its deposition. Although simple formulae might work in particular cases where galaxies form nearly adiabatically, in general it might prove impossible to predict the halo response to galaxy formation without a detailed understanding of a galaxy's detailed assembly history.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/54f0d9bd448dd225795bd1e9a111b5dc7340757b

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Citations in the corpus

Quantifying baryon effects on the matter power spectrum and the weak lensing shear correlation (2018, methodology): “[33] found best agreement with simulations for the values of a = 0.”
The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic, and Integrated Properties (2016, background): “When baryons are included, the halos become more spherical and evolve toward oblate at all radii but mostly in their inner parts (e.g., Kazantzidis et al. 2004, Bailin et al. 2005, Abadi et al. 2010).”
Erratum: From dwarf spheroidals to cD galaxies: simulating the galaxy population in a ΛCDM cosmology (2010, background): “However, recent simulations suggest that this simple scheme overestimates the effect (e.g. Gnedin et al. 2004; Abadi et al. 2010).”
A new method to quantify the effects of baryons on the matter power spectrum (2015, background): “[25, 26] showed that a better agreement with numerical simulations is obtained if the slightly modified relation”
Galaxy Masses: A Review (2013, methodology): “The halo inner logarithmic slope is allowed to vary from the values predicted by halo contraction models (Abadi et al. 2010) to the nearly constant density profiles expected from halo expansion models (Pontzen & Governato 2012).”
The RAVE survey : the Galactic escape speed and the mass of the Milky Way (2013, background): “In this approach the tension between the constraints coming from the circular speed at the solar radius, and the mass estimates at larger distances are likely to be resolved by an intermediate halo model as proposed by Abadi et al. (2010).”
THE LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE OF THE HALO OF THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY. I. GLOBAL STELLAR DENSITY, MORPHOLOGY AND METALLICITY PROPERTIES (2013, background): “However, these triaxial structures become approximately oblate when baryonic physics is included in the simulations (see, e.g. Abadi et al. 2010), with c/a ∼ 0.8, c/b ∼ 0.9 for the dark matter component, at a radial distance corresponding to ∼ 30 kpc in M31 (Zemp et al. 2012, see their Figure 11).”
THE TWO PHASES OF GALAXY FORMATION (2010, background): “…expected from the effect of adiabatic contraction galaxies with significant in-situ star formation, i.e. more dissipation, live in more concentrated halos (Blumenthal et al. 1986; Dubinski 1994; Jesseit et al. 2002; Debattista et al. 2008; Gnedin et al. 2004; Abadi et al. 2010; Auger et al. 2010).”
THE DENSITY PROFILES OF MASSIVE, RELAXED GALAXY CLUSTERS. I. THE TOTAL DENSITY OVER THREE DECADES IN RADIUS (2012, background): “…modify the structure of the DM. Cooling allows baryons to condense toward the center, which makes the DM more concentrated (Blumenthal et al. 1986; Gnedin et al. 2004; Sellwood & McGaugh 2005; Gustafsson et al. 2006; Pedrosa et al. 2009; Abadi et al. 2010; Sommer-Larsen & Limousin 2010).”
The shape of dark matter haloes in the Aquarius simulations: evolution and memory (2011, background): “However, the work of Tissera et al. (2010); Abadi et al. (2010); Bett et al. (2010) shows that even though the halo axis ratios c© 2011 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–11 increase when a disc is formed (i.e. they become rounder), the trends with radius appear to be preserved.”
SUBSTRUCTURE DEPLETION IN THE MILKY WAY HALO BY THE DISK (2009, unknown): “2008; Abadi et al. 2009).”
Formation of Galaxy Clusters (2012, background): “At the same time, several recent studies showed that no single set of parameters of such simple models describes all objects that form in cosmological simulations equally well(Abadi et al. 2010; Gnedin et al. 2011; Gustafsson, Fairbairn & Sommer-Larsen 2006; Tisseraet al. 2010).”
UniverseMachine: The correlation between galaxy growth and dark matter halo assembly from z = 0−10 (2018, background): “Remaining effects of baryons on halo potential wells (e.g., making them less triaxial; Abadi et al. 2010) are more difficult to observe, and may require higher-order statistics such as three-point functions to capture.”
THE SHAPE OF THE INNER MILKY WAY HALO FROM OBSERVATIONS OF THE PAL 5 AND GD–1 STELLAR STREAMS (2016, background): “…of a galactic baryonic disk causes the halos to become more axisymmetric and aligned with the disk, but the minor-to-major axis ratio c/a changes only by a few tenths to c/a ≈ 0.7 to 0.8 (Dubinski 1994; Gustafsson et al. 2006; Debattista et al. 2008; Abadi et al. 2010; Kazantzidis et al. 2010).”
Dynamical modelling of the galactic bulge and bar: the Milky Way's pattern speed, stellar and dark matter mass distribution (2016, background): “In addition, since the inner part of dark matter halos is actually populated by baryons that collapse through dissipative processes, dark halos should contract, thus exacerbating any preexisting cusp (Blumenthal et al. 1986; Gnedin et al. 2004; Abadi et al. 2010).”
Constraining the Galaxy's dark halo with RAVE stars (2014, methodology): “It is obviously sensible to take the fullest possible advantage of existing constraints on the Galaxy’s mass distribution when selecting mass models.”