Einasto gravitational potentials have difficulty to hold spherically symmetric stellar systems with cores

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Einasto gravitational potentials, unlike NFW, cannot support spherically symmetric stellar systems with cores, challenging assumptions about dark matter halo models and their compatibility with observed stellar structures.

Contribution

It shows that stellar cores are incompatible with Einasto potentials, providing new constraints on dark matter models and galaxy structure interpretations.

Findings

Einasto potentials cannot sustain stellar cores

Stellar cores are incompatible with Einasto profiles

Implications for dark matter halo modeling

Abstract

It was known that an ideal spherically symmetric stellar system with isotropic velocities and an inner core cannot reside in a Navarro, Frenk, and White (NFW) gravitational potential. The incompatibility can be pinned down to the radial gradient of the NFW potential in the very center of the system, which differs from zero. The gradient is identically zero in an Einasto potential, also an alternative representation of the dark matter (DM) halos created by the kind of cold DM (CDM) defining the current cosmological model. Here we show that, despite the inner gradient being zero, stellar cores are also inconsistent with Einasto potentials. This result may have implications to constrain the nature of DM through interpreting the stellar cores often observed in dwarf galaxies.