Halo density reduction by baryonic settling?

TL;DR

This paper uses N-body simulations to investigate whether baryonic settling can significantly reduce dark matter halo densities, potentially reconciling observations with LCDM predictions.

Contribution

It confirms that baryonic clumps can flatten halo density cusps and explores the conditions and timescales for this process to occur.

Findings

A single baryonic clump can reduce the inner halo density to 0.2 of the original.

An ensemble of 50 clumps can flatten the cusp to near the halo break radius in about 9 Gyr.

The mechanism faces challenges in fully resolving the discrepancy between observed and predicted halo densities.

Abstract

We test the proposal by El-Zant et al that the dark matter density of halos could be reduced through dynamical friction acting on heavy baryonic clumps in the early stages of galaxy formation. Using N-body simulations, we confirm that the inner halo density cusp is flattened to 0.2 of the halo break radius by the settling of a single clump of mass \ga 0.5% of the halo mass. We also find that an ensemble of 50 clumps each having masses \ga 0.2% can flatten the cusp to almost the halo break radius on a time scale of \sim9 Gyr, for an NFW halo of concentration 15. We summarize some of the difficulties that need to be overcome if this mechanism is to resolve the apparent conflict between the observed inner densities of galaxy halos and the predictions of LCDM.