The (very) small-scale structure of dark matter halos

Authors
Prof.
Simon White
Date and time
12 Nov 2008 - 23:00 Europe/London
Address

Aula

Talk language
English
Slides language
English
Serie number
0
Description
In our now-standard picture for the growth of structure, dark matter halos are the basic unit of nonlinear structure in the present Universe. I will report results from simulations of galaxy-scale dark halos with more than an order of magnitude better mass resolution than any previously published work. Tests demonstrate detailed convergence for (sub)structures well below a millionth the mass of the final system. Even with such resolution the fraction of halo mass in bound subhalos does not rise above a few percent within the half-mass radius. I will also present a new simulation technique which allows structure in the dark matter distribution to be studied on very much smaller scales. This is required for accurate forecasts of the expected signal both in earth-bound experiments designed to detect dark matter directly, and in indirect detection experiments like GLAST which attempt to image dark matter annihilation radiation at gamma-ray wavelengths.