Is the Concentration of Dark Matter Halos at Virialization Universal ?

TL;DR

This study re-analyzes dark matter halo simulations to investigate the universality of halo concentration and inner density slopes at virialization, confirming some previous findings and providing new insights into the density profile shapes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that halo concentration at virialization is a universal constant and explores the correlation between density profile slopes and halo mass using various analysis methods.

Findings

Halo concentration at virialization is a universal constant.

Density profile slopes correlate with halo mass at virialization.

Inner density slopes of dwarf galaxies are shallower than 0.5 within 5% of the virial radius.

Abstract

Several recent studies suggest a correlation between dark matter halo mass and the shape of the density profile. We re-analyze simulations from Ricotti (2003) in which such a correlation was proposed. We use a standard analysis of the halo density profiles and compare the old simulations to new ones performed with Gadget2, including higher resolution runs. We confirm Ricotti's result that, at virialization, the central log slopes alpha, at 5%-10% of the virial radius are correlated with the halo mass and that the halo concentration is a universal constant. Our results do not contradict the majority of published papers: when using a split power law to fit the density profiles, due to the alpha-concentration degeneracy, the fits are consistent with halos having a universal shape with alpha=1 or 1.5 and concentrations that depend on the mass, in agreement with results published elsewhere. Recently, several groups have found no evidence for convergence of the inner halo profile to a constant power law. The choice of a split power law parameterization used in this letter is motivated by the need to compare our results to previous ones and is formally valid because we are not able to resolve regions where the slope of the fitting function reaches its asymptotic constant value. Using a non-parameterized technique, we also show that the density profiles of dwarf galaxies at z ~ 10 have a log slope shallower than 0.5 within 5% of the virial radius.