COZMIC. III. Cosmological Zoom-in Simulations of Self-interacting Dark Matter with Suppressed Initial Conditions

TL;DR

This paper presents cosmological simulations exploring how suppressed initial matter fluctuations and velocity-dependent dark matter self-interactions influence small-scale structures, revealing complex effects on halo evolution and core collapse.

Contribution

It introduces the first simulations combining matter power spectrum suppression with velocity-dependent SIDM, showing their combined impact on halo core collapse and subhalo abundance.

Findings

Suppression of initial power spectrum reduces low-mass subhalos.

P(k) suppression almost erases core collapse in halos below 10^9 solar masses.

Combination of P(k) suppression and SIDM alters halo concentration and evolution.

Abstract

We present eight cosmological dark matter (DM)--only zoom-in simulations of a Milky Way--like system that include suppression of the linear matter power spectrum $P(k)$, and/or velocity-dependent DM self-interactions, as the third installment of the COZMIC suite. We consider a model featuring a massive dark photon that mediates DM self-interactions and decays into massless dark fermions. The dark photon and dark fermions suppress linear matter perturbations, resulting in dark acoustic oscillations in $P(k)$, which ultimately affect dwarf galaxy scales. The model also features a velocity-dependent elastic self-interaction between DM particles (SIDM), with a cross section that can alleviate small-scale structure anomalies. For the first time, our simulations test the impact of $P(k)$ suppression on gravothermal evolution in an SIDM scenario that leads to core collapse in (sub)halos with present-day virial masses below $\approx 10^9~M_{\mathrm{\odot}}$. In simulations with $P(k)$ suppression and self-interactions, the lack of low-mass (sub)halos and the delayed growth of structure reduce the fraction of core-collapsed systems relative to SIDM simulations without $P(k)$ suppression. In particular, $P(k)$ suppression that saturates current warm DM constraints almost entirely erases core collapse in isolated halos. Models with less extreme $P(k)$ suppression produce core collapse in $\approx 20\%$ of subhalos and $\approx 5\%$ of isolated halos above $10^8~M_{\mathrm{\odot}}$, and also increase the abundance of extremely low-concentration isolated low-mass halos relative to SIDM. These results reveal a complex interplay between early and late-Universe DM physics, revealing new discovery scenarios in the context of upcoming small-scale structure measurements.