The Copernicus Complexio: statistical properties of warm dark matter haloes
Abstract
The recent detection of a 3.5 keV X-ray line from the centres of galaxies and clusters by Bulbul et al. and Boyarsky et al. has been interpreted as emission from the decay of 7 keV sterile neutrinos which could make up the (warm) dark matter (WDM). As part of the Copernicus Complexio (COCO) programme, we investigate the properties of dark matter haloes formed in a high-resolution cosmological N-body simulation from initial conditions similar to those expected in a universe in which the dark matter consists of 7 keV sterile neutrinos. This simulation and its cold dark matter (CDM) counterpart have ∼13.4 bn particles, each of mass ∼105 h-1 M⊙, providing detailed information about halo structure and evolution down to dwarf galaxy mass scales. Non-linear structure formation on small scales (M200 ≲ 2 × 109 h-1 M⊙) begins slightly later in COCO-WARM than in COCO-COLD. The halo mass function at the present day in the WDM model begins to drop below its CDM counterpart at a mass ∼2 × 109 h-1 M⊙ and declines very rapidly towards lower masses so that there are five times fewer haloes of mass M200 = 108 h-1 M⊙ in COCO-WARM than in COCO-COLD. Halo concentrations on dwarf galaxy scales are correspondingly smaller in COCO-WARM, and we provide a simple functional form that describes its evolution with redshift. The shapes of haloes are similar in the two cases, but the smallest haloes in COCO-WARM rotate slightly more slowly than their CDM counterparts.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- January 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/stv2294
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1507.01998
- Bibcode:
- 2016MNRAS.455..318B
- Keywords:
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- methods: numerical;
- dark matter;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 16 pages, 14 figures, replaced a typo in Table 1