The Dark Matter halo of the Milky Way, AD 2013

By Fabrizio Nesti, P. Salucci. 2013

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We derive the mass model of the Milky Way (MW), crucial for Dark Matter (DM) direct and indirect detection, using recent data and a cored dark matter (DM) halo profile, which is favoured by studies of external galaxies. The method used consists in fitting a spherically symmetric model of the Galaxy with a Burkert DM halo profile to available data: MW terminal velocities in the region inside the solar circle, circular velocity as recently estimated from maser star forming regions at intermediate radii, and velocity dispersions of stellar halo tracers for the outermost Galactic region. The latter are reproduced by integrating the Jeans equation for every modeled mass distribution, and by allowing for different velocity anisotropies for different tracer populations. For comparison we also consider a Navarro-Frenk-White profile. We find that the cored profile is the preferred one, with a shallow central density of ρH ~ 4 × 107M☉/kpc3 and a large core radius RH ~ 10 kpc, as observed in external spirals and in agreement with the mass model underlying the Universal Rotation Curve of spirals. We describe also the derived model uncertainties, which are crucially driven by the poorly constrained velocity dispersion anisotropies of halo tracers. The emerging cored DM distribution has implications for the DM annihilation angular profile, which is much less boosted in the Galactic center direction with respect to the case of the standard ΛCDM, NFW profile. Using the derived uncertainties we discuss finally the limitations and prospects to discriminate between cored and cusped DM profile with a possible observed diffuse DM annihilation signal. The present mass model aims to characterize the present-day description of the distribution of matter in our Galaxy, which is needed to frame current crucial issues of Cosmology, Astrophysics and Elementary Particles.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b7f9b83c53d746ea1256076d108334e2243ae469

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Citations in the corpus

The mass distribution and gravitational potential of the Milky Way (2016, background): “3), including Paper I,Catena & Ullio (2010), and Nesti & Salucci(2013).”
Migdal effect in dark matter direct detection experiments (2017, methodology): “(8)For the Burkert profile [7], for example, it is estimated to be ρDM ' 0.”
Limits on dark matter annihilation signals from the Fermi LAT 4-year measurement of the isotropic gamma-ray background (2015, methodology): “Observational tracers of the gravitational potential also cannot be used to determine the DM profile within < ∼ 2 kpc from the Galactic center as it is gravitationally dominated by baryons [65, 66].”
A mass-dependent density profile for dark matter haloes including the influence of galaxy formation (2014, unknown): “Observations of the Milky Way are best ﬁt with an NFW halo with high-concentration parameter c ≈ 18–20 (Battaglia et al. 2005; Catena & Ullio 2010; Deason et al. 2012; Nesti & Salucci 2013).”
In wino veritas? Indirect searches shed light on neutralino dark matter (2013, result): “Observations also offer little help; a recent fit claimed a mild preference for a large core [65], but was also compatible with an NFW-like distribution.”
Constraining the Galaxy's dark halo with RAVE stars (2014, result): “Also most other recent studies that do not rely on the separability assumption find value for ρdm, that are in good agreement with our measurement (Salucci et al. 2010; Iocco et al. 2011; McMillan 2011; Nesti & Salucci 2013).”