The Observed Properties of Dark Matter on Small Spatial Scales
Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2007 papers
Abstract
We present a synthesis of recent photometric and kinematic data for several of the most dark-matter dominated galaxies. There is a bimodal distribution in half-light radii, with stable star clusters always being smaller than $\sim30$pc, while stable galaxies are always larger than $\sim120$pc. We extend the previously known observational relationships and interpret them in terms of a more fundamental pair of intrinsic properties of dark matter itself: dark matter forms cored mass distributions, with a core scale length of greater than about 100pc, and always has a maximum central massdensity with a narrow range. The dark matter in dSph galaxies appears to be clustered such that there is a mean volume mass density within the stellar distribution which has the very low value of about 0.1$\Msun$ pc$^{-3}$ (about 5GeV/c$^2$ cm$^{-3}$). All dSphs have velocity dispersions equivalent to circular velocities at the edge of their light distributions of $\sim 15$km s$^{-1}$. In two dSphs there is evidence that the density profile is shallow (cored) in the inner regions, and so far none of the dSphs display kinematics which require the presence of an inner cusp. The maximum central dark matter density derived is model dependent, but is likely to have a mean value (averaged over a volume of radius 10pc) of $\sim0.1\Msun$ pc$^{-3}$ (about 5GeV/c$^2$ cm$^{-3}$) for our proposed cored dark mass distributions (where it is similar to the mean value), or $\sim60\Msun$ pc$^{-3}$ (about 2TeV/c$^2$ cm$^{-3}$) if the dark matter density distribution is cusped. Galaxies are embedded in dark matter halos with these properties; smaller systems containing dark matter are not observed.