Colliding clusters and dark matter self-interactions

TY - JOUR

T1 - Colliding clusters and dark matter self-interactions

AU - Kahlhoefer, Felix

AU - Schmidt-Hoberg, Kai

AU - Frandsen, Mads Toudal

AU - Sarkar, Subir

PY - 2014/1/21

Y1 - 2014/1/21

N2 - When a darkmatter halomoves through a background of darkmatter particles, self-interactions can lead to both deceleration and evaporation of the halo and thus shift its centroid relative to the collisionless stars and galaxies. We study the magnitude and time evolution of this shift for two classes of dark matter self-interactions, namely frequent self-interactions with small momentum transfer (e.g. due to long-range interactions) and rare self-interactions with large momentum transfer (e.g. contact interactions), and find important differences between the two cases. We find that neither effect can be strong enough to completely separate the dark matter halo from the galaxies, if we impose conservative bounds on the self-interaction crosssection. The majority of both populations remain bound to the same gravitational potential, and the peaks of their distributions are therefore always coincident. Consequently, any apparent separation is mainly due to particles which are leaving the gravitational potential, so will be largest shortly after the collision but not observable in evolved systems. Nevertheless, the fraction of collisions with large momentum transfer is an important characteristic of self-interactions, which can potentially be extracted from observational data and provide an important clue as to the nature of dark matter.

AB - When a darkmatter halomoves through a background of darkmatter particles, self-interactions can lead to both deceleration and evaporation of the halo and thus shift its centroid relative to the collisionless stars and galaxies. We study the magnitude and time evolution of this shift for two classes of dark matter self-interactions, namely frequent self-interactions with small momentum transfer (e.g. due to long-range interactions) and rare self-interactions with large momentum transfer (e.g. contact interactions), and find important differences between the two cases. We find that neither effect can be strong enough to completely separate the dark matter halo from the galaxies, if we impose conservative bounds on the self-interaction crosssection. The majority of both populations remain bound to the same gravitational potential, and the peaks of their distributions are therefore always coincident. Consequently, any apparent separation is mainly due to particles which are leaving the gravitational potential, so will be largest shortly after the collision but not observable in evolved systems. Nevertheless, the fraction of collisions with large momentum transfer is an important characteristic of self-interactions, which can potentially be extracted from observational data and provide an important clue as to the nature of dark matter.

U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stt2097

DO - 10.1093/mnras/stt2097

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0035-8711

VL - 437

SP - 2865

EP - 2881

JO - Royal Astronomical Society. Monthly Notices

JF - Royal Astronomical Society. Monthly Notices

IS - 3

ER -