A centrally heated dark halo for our Galaxy

Abstract

We construct a new family of models of our Galaxy in which dark matter and disc stars are both represented by distribution functions that are analytic functions of the action integrals of motion. The potential that is self-consistently generated by the dark matter, stars and gas is determined, and parameters in the distribution functions are adjusted until the model is compatible with observational constraints on the circular-speed curve, the vertical density profile of the stellar disc near the Sun, the kinematics of nearly 200 000 giant stars within 2 kpc of the Sun, and estimates of the optical depth to microlensing of bulge stars. We find that the data require a dark halo in which the phase-space density is approximately constant for actions |J| \lesssim 140 kpc km ^-1. In real space these haloes have core radii ~ 2 kpc.

14 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (12)

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Cited by in corpus (18)

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• The Fornax3D project: Assembly histories of lenticular galaxies from a combined dynamical and population orbital analysis
• Dynamical model of the Milky Way using APOGEE and Gaia data
• Distribution functions for resonantly trapped orbits in the Galactic disc
• The structural evolution of galaxies with both thin and thick discs
• Migration and kinematics in growing disc galaxies with thin and thick discs
• Mapping Dark Matter in the Milky Way using Normalizing Flows and Gaia DR3
• Weighing the Galactic disk in sub-regions of the solar neighbourhood using Gaia DR2
• Action-based models for dwarf spheroidal galaxies and globular clusters
• Estimating the local dark matter density in a non-axisymmetric wobbling disc
• Residuals of an Equilibrium Model for the Galaxy Reveal a State of Disequilibrium in the Solar Neighborhood
• The central black hole in the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Leo I Not supermassive, at most an intermediate-mass candidate
• Origin of reduced dynamical friction by dark matter halos with net prograde rotation
• Leo I: the classical dwarf spheroidal galaxy with the highest dark-matter density
• Local dark matter density from Gaia DR3 K-dwarfs using Gaussian processes
• Thermodynamics of self-gravitating fermions as a robust theory for dark matter halos: Stability analysis applied to the Milky Way
• The odd primordial halo of the Milky Way implied by Gaia. A shallow core, but a steep decline
• Multi-component, axisymmetric dynamical models of dSphs based on distribution functions: inferences on dark matter and intermediate-mass black holes in Draco and Ursa Minor