Collisional versus Collisionless Dark Matter
Ben Moore, Sergio Gelato, Adrian Jenkins, F. R. Pearce, Vicent Quilis
TL;DR
This paper investigates whether strongly self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) can resolve CDM's small-scale issues by contrasting SIDM and CDM halos and their substructure. It employs SPH-based hydrodynamic simulations, treating SIDM as an ideal gas with $γ=5/3$ and using the Hydra code with validation from Benz-Navarro SPH to follow hierarchical halo growth. Key results show SIDM halos are more spherical and can be rotationally flattened in their inner regions, while substructure experiences ram-pressure truncation and drag beyond gravitational stripping; lensing constraints and tidal streams support SIDM predictions. Satellites in SIDM exhibit a velocity bias of $σ_{SIDM}/σ_{CDM}=0.85$ and more circular orbits with $β_{SIDM} ≈ 0.5$, though in the short mean free path limit SIDM yields a density profile $ρ(r) ∝ r^{-2}$, which challenges some galactic rotation curves. Together, these findings suggest SIDM can address several small-scale discrepancies and inform interpretations of halo structure and dynamics.
Abstract
We compare the structure and substructure of dark matter halos in model universes dominated by collisional, strongly self interacting dark matter (SIDM) and collisionless, weakly interacting dark matter (CDM). While SIDM virialised halos are more nearly spherical than CDM halos, they can be rotationally flattened by as much as 20% in their inner regions. Substructure halos suffer ram-pressure truncation and drag which are more rapid and severe than their gravitational counterparts tidal stripping and dynamical friction. Lensing constraints on the size of galactic halos in clusters are a factor of two smaller than predicted by gravitational stripping, and the recent detection of tidal streams of stars escaping from the satellite galaxy Carina suggests that its tidal radius is close to its optical radius of a few hundred parsecs --- an order of magnitude smaller than predicted by CDM models but consistent with SIDM. The orbits of SIDM satellites suffer significant velocity bias $σ_{SIDM}/σ_{CDM}=0.85$ and are more circular than CDM, $β_{SIDM}} \approx 0.5$, in agreement with the inferred orbits of the Galaxy's satellites. In the limit of a short mean free path, SIDM halos have singular isothermal density profiles, thus in its simplest incarnation SIDM is inconsistent with galactic rotation curves.