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A case for extended dark matter halos in dwarf spheroidal galaxies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2005

Sergey Mashchenko ,
H.M.P. Couchman  and
Alison Sills
Sergey Mashchenko
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4M1, Canada email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
H.M.P. Couchman
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4M1, Canada email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Alison Sills
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4M1, Canada email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
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Abstract

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We explore the recently proposed idea that the Galactic dwarf spheroidal galaxies are significantly (by 2 orders of magnitude) more massive than the conventional mass estimates of ${\sim}10^7$ M$_\odot$. In the larger mass case, the observed distribution of stars in these galaxies should have been entirely shaped by internal processes (formation and dynamic relaxation of stars in the potential of the dark matter halo), and not by the Galactic tidal field. We carried out numerical n-body simulations aimed at testing this scenario. Observed properties of three Galactic dwarf spheroidal galaxies were found to be consistent with our model. From our analysis, these dwarfs appear to be massive enough to alleviate the “missing satellites” problem of cold dark matter cosmologies.

Keywords

dark matterearly universegalaxies: dwarfgalaxies: formationmethods: n-body simulations
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 1 , Colloquium C198: Near-Field Cosmology with Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies , March 2005 , pp. 92 - 96
Copyright
© 2005 International Astronomical Union