The same with less: The cosmic web of warm versus cold dark matter dwarf galaxies

TL;DR

This study compares the distribution of dwarf galaxies in warm and cold dark matter cosmologies, finding their large-scale distributions are nearly indistinguishable under certain conditions, complicating dark matter identification.

Contribution

It demonstrates that WDM and CDM galaxy distributions are similar when galaxy formation suppression is considered, highlighting the challenge in distinguishing dark matter models observationally.

Findings

WDM and CDM galaxy distributions are nearly identical under certain conditions.

Void properties do not significantly differ between WDM and CDM.

Galaxy-halo property scatter influences the presence of galaxies in voids.

Abstract

We explore fundamental properties of the distribution of low mass dark matter halos within the cosmic web using warm dark matter (WDM) and cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological simulations. Using self abundance-matched mock galaxy catalogs, we show that the distribution of dwarf galaxies in a WDM universe, wherein low mass halo formation is heavily suppressed, is nearly indistinguishable to that of a CDM universe whose low mass halos are not seen because galaxy formation is suppressed below some threshold halo mass. However, if the scatter between dwarf galaxy luminosity and halo properties is large enough, low mass CDM halos would sometimes host relatively bright galaxies thereby populating CDM voids with the occasional isolated galaxy and reducing the numbers of completely empty voids. Otherwise, without high mass to light scatter, all mock galaxy clustering statistics that we consider--the auto-correlation function, the numbers and radial profiles of satellites, the numbers of isolated galaxies, and the PDF of small voids--are nearly identical in CDM and WDM. WDM voids are neither larger nor emptier than CDM voids, when constructed from abundance-matched halo catalogs. It is thus a challenge to determine whether the CDM problem of the over-abundance of small halos with respect to the number density of observed dwarf galaxies has a cosmological solution or an astrophysical solution. However, some clues about the dark matter particle and the scatter between the properties of dwarf galaxies and their dark matter halo hosts might be found in the cosmic web of galaxies in future surveys of the local volume.