Kinematical and chemical vertical structure of the Galactic thick disk II. A lack of dark matter in the solar neighborhood

Abstract

We estimated the dynamical surface mass density Sigma at the solar position between Z=1.5 and 4 kpc from the Galactic plane, as inferred from the kinematics of thick disk stars. The formulation is exact within the limit of validity of a few basic assumptions. The resulting trend of Sigma(Z) matches the expectations of visible mass alone, and no dark component is required to account for the observations. We extrapolate a dark matter (DM) density in the solar neighborhood of 0+-1 mM_sun pc^-3, and all the current models of a spherical DM halo are excluded at a confidence level higher than 4sigma. A detailed analysis reveals that a small amount of DM is allowed in the volume under study by the change of some input parameter or hypothesis, but not enough to match the expectations of the models, except under an exotic combination of non-standard assumptions. Identical results are obtained when repeating the calculation with kinematical measurements available in the literature. We demonstrate that a DM halo would be detected by our method, and therefore the results have no straightforward interpretation. Only the presence of a highly prolate (flattening q>2) DM halo can be reconciled with the observations, but this is highly unlikely in LambdaCDM models. The results challenge the current understanding of the spatial distribution and nature of the Galactic DM. In particular, our results may indicate that any direct DM detection experiment is doomed to fail, if the local density of the target particles is negligible.

Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (21)

• The Milky Way's Circular Velocity Curve to 60 kpc and an Estimate of the Dark Matter Halo Mass from Kinematics of ~2400 SDSS Blue Horizontal Branch Stars
• The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS: II. Stellar Metallicity
• The Universal Rotation Curve of Spiral Galaxies. II The Dark Matter Distribution out to the Virial Radius
• High-resolution dark matter density profiles of THINGS dwarf galaxies: Correcting for non-circular motions
• Thin, thick and dark discs in LCDM
• The Origin of the Bifurcation in the Sagittarius Stream
• The Vertical Structure of the Outer Milky Way HI Disk
• Dark matter in the Milky Way, II. the HI gas distribution as a tracer of the gravitational potential
• The Unorthodox Orbits of Substructure Halos
• Estimation of the Tilt of the Stellar Velocity Ellipsoid from RAVE and Implications for Mass Models
• Slicing and dicing the Milky Way disk in SDSS
• Galactic kinematics with RAVE data: I. The distribution of stars towards the Galactic poles
• LambdaCDM Halo Density Profiles: where do actual halos converge to NFW ones?
• Velocity Shear of the Thick Disk from SPM3 Proper Motions at the South Galactic Pole
• The kinematics of late type stars in the solar cylinder studied with SDSS data
• The Century Survey Galactic Halo Project III: A Complete 4300 deg^2 Survey of Blue Horizontal Branch Stars in the Metal-Weak Thick Disk and Inner Halo
• Estimation of galactic model parameters in high latitudes with SDSS
• Kinematical and chemical vertical structure of the Galactic thick disk I. Thick disk kinematics
• Estimation of Galactic model parameters in high latitudes with 2MASS
• Galactic structure studies from BATC survey
• Towards a fully consistent Milky Way disc model - II. The local disc model and SDSS data of the NGP region

Cited by in corpus (53)

• The Local Dark Matter Density
• On the local dark matter density
• Galaxy Masses
• Stars, Gas, and Dark Matter in the Solar Neighborhood
• Galactic Searches for Dark Matter
• Constraining the Galaxy's dark halo with RAVE stars
• Dynamical constraints on the dark matter distribution in the Milky Way
• Status of the Inert Doublet Model and the Role of multileptons at the LHC
• The Gravitational Potential Near the Sun From SEGUE K-dwarf Kinematics
• Sensitivity Projections for Dark Matter Searches with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Evolution over time of the Milky Way's disc shape
• Modelling the observed properties of carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars using binary population synthesis
• The Surface Density Profile of the Galactic Disk from the Terminal Velocity Curve
• Determining the local dark matter density with LAMOST data
• The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS. V. Mapping the Dark Matter Halo
• Testing dark matter and geometry sustained circular velocities in the Milky Way with Gaia DR2
• Thick disk kinematics from RAVE and the solar motion
• A self-consistent phase-space distribution function for the anisotropic Dark Matter halo of the Milky Way
• Light Neutralino Dark Matter in the pMSSM: Implications of LEP, LHC and Dark Matter Searches on SUSY Particle Spectra
• Deep optical images of Malin 1 reveal new features
• Light and Darkness: consistently coupling dark matter to photons via effective operators
• Solar System constraints on local dark matter density
• Thin disk kinematics from RAVE and the solar motion
• Updated Kinematic Constraints on a Dark Disk
• Gaia-DR2 extended kinematical maps. Part II: Dynamics in the Galactic disk explaining radial and vertical velocities
• $\text{galkin}$: a new compilation of the Milky Way rotation curve data
• On local dark matter density
• Enhanced exploration for primordial black holes using pulsar timing arrays
• Bracketing the impact of astrophysical uncertainties on local dark matter searches
• Constraints on the Shape of the Milky Way Dark Matter Halo from Jeans Equations Applied to SDSS Data
• Galactic Dark Matter and Bertrand Space-times
• The difficulty of measuring the local dark matter density
• Informing dark matter direct detection limits with the ARTEMIS simulations
• The structure and kinematics of the the Galaxy thin gaseous disc outside the solar orbit
• The vertical force in the Solar Neighbourhood using red clump stars in TGASxRAVE - Constraints on the local dark matter density
• Escape from the Bermuda cluster: orphanization by multiple stellar ejections
• Unimodular Constraint on global scale Invariance
• Measuring Galactic Dark Matter through Unsupervised Machine Learning
• Binary white dwarfs in the halo of the Milky Way
• Determining the velocity dispersion of the thick disc
• Vertical structure of Galactic disk kinematics from LAMOST K giants
• Jeans analysis of the Galactic thick disk and the local dark matter density
• Measuring the local Dark Matter density in the laboratory
• The Case Against Dark Matter and Modified Gravity: Flat Rotation Curves Are a Rigorous Requirement in Rotating Self-Gravitating Newtonian Gaseous Disks
• Dark Matter as gravitational solitons in the weak field limit
• Modified equations in the theory of induced gravity. Solution to the cosmological constant problem
• Velocities hasten to tell us about the Universe
• The $\kappa$-model, a minimal model alternative to dark matter. Application to the galactic rotation problem
• Astrometric mock observations for determining the local dark matter density
• Quantum gravitational anomaly as a dark matter
• A lower bound on the Milky Way mass from general phase-space distribution function models
• Weighing the Galactic disk using the Jeans equation: lessons from simulations
• Comparing dark matter and MOND hyphotheses from the distribution function of A, F, early-G stars in the solar neighbourhood