Licia Verde (Rutgers)
"Abundance of dwarf galaxies and DM halo profiles from observed rotation curves"
ABSTRACT
We show that gas in a large fraction of low mass dark matter halos may
form Toomre-stable disks, if angular momentum is conserved when
the gas contracts. Such halos would be stable to star formation and
therefore remain dark. This may potentially explain the discrepancy
between the predicted and observed number of dwarf satellites in
the Local Group, as well as the deviation between the predicted and the
observed faint end slope of the luminosity function.
We show that model fits to rotation curves are also consistent with this
hypothesis.
Disk parameters are obtained by performing a likelihood analysis on a
large set of high-spatial resolution optical rotation curves of galaxies.
Our adopted model comprises of an exponential disk embedded within a
cold dark matter halo that we model either with a Navarro, Frenk & White
profile or a pseudo-isothermal profile.
We present the statistical distribution of the recovered disk
parameters and we show that the disk parameters of these galaxies avoid
regions in parameter space for which the halos would be Toomre stable
(i.e. would be dark).
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