Set the Night on FIRE: Building an Empirical Local Dark Matter Velocity Distribution

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to reconstruct the local dark matter velocity distribution by using stellar data and simulation insights, capturing merger-induced features beyond the Standard Halo Model.

Contribution

It introduces a framework combining stellar and dark matter data from simulations to accurately model the local dark matter velocity distribution, including merger effects.

Findings

Strong correlation between stellar and dark matter velocity distributions from mergers.

Reconstructed velocity distribution captures features absent in the Standard Halo Model.

Uncertainty dominated by stellar mass-halo mass relation, limiting further improvements.

Abstract

The majority of terrestrial direct detection experiments for Dark Matter (DM) rely on the Standard Halo Model (SHM), which assumes the local DM velocity distribution follows a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. However, galaxy mergers can deposit DM that remains kinematically clustered today, inducing deviations from the smooth SHM prediction. Previous studies have suggested that the local stellar velocity distribution may serve as a tracer for DM populations originating from the same progenitor systems. In this work, we systematically investigate how merger mass and accretion time affect the correlation between local stellar and DM velocity distributions in Milky Way-like galaxies from the FIRE-2 simulations. We find a strong correlation between traceable DM components and their stellar counterparts, with the tightest correspondence arising from lower-mass mergers accreted at earlier cosmic times. For the remaining DM that lacks an identifiable stellar counterpart, which dominate the full DM fraction, we find that its velocity distribution is well described by a component-wise generalized Gaussian. Combining these two ingredients, we reconstruct the full local DM velocity distribution. This framework captures merger-induced features-such as co-rotation of accreted material with the galactic disk-that are entirely absent in the SHM. Finally, we propagate uncertainties through the reconstruction and show that they are dominated by the stellar mass-halo mass relation, which is unlikely to improve substantially in the near term. We therefore argue that this framework approaches the current limit of our ability to characterize the local DM velocity distribution.