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Full-Text Articles in Astrophysics and Astronomy

Erasing Dark Matter Cusps In Cosmological Galactic Halos With Baryons, Emilio Romano-Diaz, Isaac Shlosman, Yehuda Hoffman, Clayton Heller Oct 2008

Erasing Dark Matter Cusps In Cosmological Galactic Halos With Baryons, Emilio Romano-Diaz, Isaac Shlosman, Yehuda Hoffman, Clayton Heller

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We study the central dark matter (DM) cusp evolution in cosmologically grown galactic halos. Numerical models with and without baryons (baryons+DM, hereafter BDM model, and pure DM, PDM model, respectively) are advanced from identical initial conditions, obtained using the Constrained Realization method. The DM cusp properties are contrasted by a direct comparison of pure DM and baryonic models. We find a divergent evolution between the PDM and BDM models within the inner few × 10 kpc region. The PDM model forms an R−1 cusp as expected, while the DM in the BDM model forms a larger isothermal cusp R …


Noise-Driven Evolution In Stellar Systems: Theory, Martin D. Weinberg Jan 2008

Noise-Driven Evolution In Stellar Systems: Theory, Martin D. Weinberg

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

We present a theory for describing the evolution of a galaxy caused by stochastic events such as weak mergers, transient spiral structure, orbiting blobs, etc. This noise excites large-scale patterns that drives the evolution of the galactic density profile. In dark-matter haloes, the repeated stochastic perturbations preferentially ring the lowest-order modes of the halo with only a very weak dependence on the details of their source. Shaped by these modes, the profile quickly takes on a nearly self-similar form. We show that this form has the features of the “universal profile” reported by Navarro, Frenk, & White independent of initial …