The dark matter profile of the Milky Way: a non-parametric reconstruction

Abstract

We present the results of a new, non-parametric method to reconstruct the Galactic dark matter profile directly from observations. Using the latest kinematic data to track the total gravitational potential and the observed distribution of stars and gas to set the baryonic component, we infer the dark matter contribution to the circular velocity across the Galaxy. The radial derivative of this dynamical contribution is then estimated to extract the dark matter profile. The innovative feature of our approach is that it makes no assumption on the functional form nor shape of the profile, thus allowing for a clean determination with no theoretical bias. We illustrate the power of the method by constraining the spherical dark matter profile between 2.5 and 25 kpc away from the Galactic centre. The results show that the proposed method, free of widely used assumptions, can already be applied to pinpoint the dark matter distribution in the Milky Way with competitive accuracy, and paves the way for future developments.

11 pages, 2 figures, matches published version (accepted January 29, 2015)

References in corpus (11)

• 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 Local Dark Matter Density
• The Universal Rotation Curve of Spiral Galaxies. II The Dark Matter Distribution out to the Virial Radius
• On the Shoulders of Giants: Properties of the Stellar Halo and the Milky Way Mass Distribution
• Evidence for dark matter in the inner Milky Way
• A new determination of the local dark matter density from the kinematics of K dwarfs
• The velocity dispersion and mass profile of the Milky Way
• Milky Way Kinematics: Measurements at the Subcentral Point of the Fourth Quadrant
• The Long Bar in the Milky Way. Corroboration of an old hypothesis
• Open Clusters as Galactic Disk Tracers: I. Project Motivation, Cluster Membership and Bulk Three-Dimensional Kinematics
• The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS. V. Mapping the Dark Matter Halo

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Rotation and Mass in the Milky Way and Spiral Galaxies
• Gravitational Lensing of Schwarzschild and Charged Black Holes Immersed in Perfect Fluid Dark Matter Halo
• Neutrino clustering in the Milky Way and beyond
• $\text{galkin}$: a new compilation of the Milky Way rotation curve data
• Gravitational Lensing of Spherically Symmetric Black Holes in Dark Matter Halos
• Solar System constraints on Renormalization Group extended General Relativity: The PPN and Laplace-Runge-Lenz analyses with the external potential effect
• Data-driven modeling of rotation curves with artificial neural networks
• The formation of planetary systems with SPICA