Detecting low-mass haloes with strong gravitational lensing II: constraints on the density profiles of two detected subhaloes

Abstract

Strong gravitational lensing can detect the presence of low-mass haloes and subhaloes through their effect on the surface brightness of lensed arcs. We carry out an extended analysis of the density profiles and mass distributions of two detected subhaloes, intending to determine if their properties are consistent with the predictions of the cold dark matter (CDM) model. We analyse two gravitational lensing systems in which the presence of two low-mass subhaloes has been previously reported: SDSSJ0946+1006 and JVASB1938+66. We model these detections assuming four different models for their density profiles and compare our results with predictions from the IllustrisTNG50-1 simulation. We find that the detected subhaloes are well-modelled by steep inner density slopes, close to or steeper than isothermal. The NFW profile thus needs extremely high concentrations to reproduce the observed properties, which are outliers of the CDM predictions. We also find a characteristic radius within which the best-fitting density profiles predict the same enclosed mass. We conclude that the lens modelling can constrain this quantity more robustly than the inner slope. We find that the diversity of subhalo profiles in TNG50, consistent with tidally stripping and baryonic effects, is able to match the observed steep inner slopes, somewhat alleviating the tension reported by previous works even if the detections are not well fit by the typical subhalo. However, while we find simulated analogues of the detection in B1938+666, the stellar content required by simulations to explain the central density of the detection in J0946+1006 is in tension with the upper limit in luminosity estimated from the observations. New detections will increase our statistical sample and help us reveal more about the density profiles of these objects and the dark matter content of the Universe.

arXiv comment23 pages, 19 figures, submitted to A&A. Comments welcome

References in corpus (87)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The Structure of Cold Dark Matter Halos
• The cosmological simulation code GADGET-2
• The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package
• Binary companions of evolved stars in APOGEE DR14: Search method and catalog of ~5,000 companions
• E pur si muove: Galiliean-invariant cosmological hydrodynamical simulations on a moving mesh
• Profiles of dark haloes: evolution, scatter, and environment
• Statistical Properties of X-ray Clusters: Analytic and Numerical Comparisons
• Simulating Galaxy Formation with the IllustrisTNG Model
• Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback
• Dark Matter Self-interactions and Small Scale Structure
• First Results from the TNG50 Simulation: Galactic outflows driven by supernovae and black hole feedback
• Dark matter halo concentrations in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe year 5 cosmology
• First Results from the TNG50 Simulation: The evolution of stellar and gaseous disks across cosmic time
• The merger rate of galaxies in the Illustris Simulation: a comparison with observations and semi-empirical models
• Formation and evolution of galaxy dark matter halos and their substructure
• Subhaloes in Self-Interacting Galactic Dark Matter Haloes
• Density profiles and substructure of dark matter halos: converging results at ultra-high numerical resolution
• The Sloan Lens ACS Survey. I. A Large Spectroscopically Selected Sample of Massive Early-Type Lens Galaxies
• COLOSSUS: A python toolkit for cosmology, large-scale structure, and dark matter halos
• The properties of warm dark matter haloes
• The haloes of bright satellite galaxies in a warm dark matter universe
• Gravitational detection of a low-mass dark satellite at cosmological distance
• The Mass-Concentration-Redshift Relation of Cold and Warm Dark Matter Halos
• Detection of lensing substructure using ALMA observations of the dusty galaxy SDP.81
• Disruption of Dark Matter Substructure: Fact or Fiction?
• Detection of a Dark Substructure through Gravitational Imaging
• Bayesian Strong Gravitational-Lens Modeling on Adaptive Grids: Objective Detection of Mass Substructure in Galaxies
• Nonlinear Evolution of Cosmological Structures in Warm Dark Matter Models
• Warm dark matter chills out: constraints on the halo mass function and the free-streaming length of dark matter with 8 quadruple-image strong gravitational lenses
• Density Profiles of Cold Dark Matter Substructure: Implications for the Missing Satellites Problem
• An accurate physical model for halo concentrations
• The universality of the virial halo mass function and models for non-universality of other halo definitions
• ETHOS - An Effective Theory of Structure Formation: Dark matter physics as a possible explanation of the small-scale CDM problems
• The Sloan Lens ACS Survey. VI: Discovery and analysis of a double Einstein ring
• Inference of the Cold Dark Matter substructure mass function at z=0.2 using strong gravitational lenses
• The Spur and the Gap in GD-1: Dynamical evidence for a dark substructure in the Milky Way halo
• SHARP -- VII. New constraints on the dark matter free-streaming properties and substructure abundance from gravitationally lensed quasars
• An excess of small-scale gravitational lenses observed in galaxy clusters
• Evidence for dark matter contraction and a Salpeter IMF in a massive early-type galaxy
• Gravothermal collapse of isolated self-interacting dark matter haloes: N-body simulation versus the fluid model
• Modelling the line-of-sight contribution in substructure lensing
• Joint constraints on thermal relic dark matter from strong gravitational lensing, the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest, and Milky Way satellites
• Low-mass halo perturbations in strong gravitational lenses at redshift z$\sim$0.5 are consistent with CDM
• Dark Matter Constraints from a Unified Analysis of Strong Gravitational Lenses and Milky Way Satellite Galaxies
• Too Big To Fail in Light of Gaia
• Lensing substructure quantification in RXJ1131-1231: A 2 keV lower bound on dark matter thermal relic mass
• Constraining sterile neutrino cosmologies with strong gravitational lensing observations at redshift z~0.2
• Cusped Mass Models Of Gravitational Lenses
• SIDM on FIRE: Hydrodynamical Self-Interacting Dark Matter simulations of low-mass dwarf galaxies
• Strong lensing signatures of self-interacting dark matter in low-mass halos
• The tidal evolution of dark matter substructure -- II. The impact of artificial disruption on subhalo mass functions and radial profiles
• Quantifying dwarf satellites through gravitational imaging: the case of SDSS J120602.09+514229.5
• The surprising accuracy of isothermal Jeans modelling of self-interacting dark matter density profiles
• The tidal evolution of dark matter substructure -- I. Subhalo density profiles
• A lensed radio jet at milli-arcsecond resolution II: Constraints on fuzzy dark matter from an extended gravitational arc
• Molecular Gas in Lensed z>2 Quasar Host Galaxies and the Star Formation Law for Galaxies with Luminous Active Galactic Nuclei
• Probing the nature of dark matter by forward modeling flux ratios in strong gravitational lenses
• The interplay of Self-Interacting Dark Matter and baryons in shaping the halo evolution
• A complete infrared Einstein ring in the gravitational lens system B1938+666
• Strong Dark Matter Self-interactions Diversify Halo Populations within and surrounding the Milky Way
• SHARP - V. Modelling gravitationally-lensed radio arcs imaged with global VLBI observations
• Redshifts of the Gravitational Lenses MG1131+0456 and B1938+666
• Too small to succeed? Lighting up massive dark matter subhaloes of the Milky Way
• Size matters: the non-universal density profile of subhaloes in SPH simulations and implications for the Milky Way's dSphs
• A novel 3D technique to study the kinematics of lensed galaxies
• A novel approach to visibility-space modelling of interferometric gravitational lens observations at high angular resolution
• SHARP - I. A high-resolution multi-band view of the infra-red Einstein ring of JVAS B1938+666
• TDCOSMO III: Dark matter substructure meets dark energy -- the effects of (sub)halos on strong-lensing measurements of $H_0$
• A persistent excess of galaxy-galaxy strong lensing observed in galaxy clusters
• Resolving on 100 pc scales the UV-continuum in Lyman-$\alpha$ emitters between redshift 2 to 3 with gravitational lensing
• Tidal radii of globular clusters and the mass of the Milky Way
• A robust mass estimator for dark matter subhalo perturbations in strong gravitational lenses
• LCDM halo substructure properties revealed with high resolution and large volume cosmological simulations
• A Triple Rollover: A third multiply-imaged source at z~6 behind the Jackpot gravitational lens
• Gravitational imaging through a triple source plane lens: revisiting the $\Lambda$CDM-defying dark subhalo in SDSSJ0946+1006
• The Environments of SLACS Gravitational Lenses
• The lensing properties of subhaloes in massive elliptical galaxies in sterile neutrino cosmologies
• Steepened inner density profiles of group galaxies via interactions: An N-body analysis
• Systematic errors in strong gravitational lensing reconstructions, a numerical simulation perspective
• The Expected Properties of Dark Lenses
• A fully-spectroscopic triple-source-plane lens: the Jackpot completed
• Complex angular structure of three elliptical galaxies from high-resolution ALMA observations of strong gravitational lenses
• Not All Subhaloes Are Created Equal: Modelling the Diversity of Subhalo Density Profiles in TNG50
• Properties and observables of massive galaxies in self-interacting dark matter cosmologies
• Satellite galaxy abundance dependency on cosmology in Magneticum simulations

Cited by in corpus (14)

• A million-solar-mass object detected at cosmological distance using gravitational imaging
• SIDM Concerto: Compilation and Data Release of Self-interacting Dark Matter Zoom-in Simulations
• A possible challenge for Cold and Warm Dark Matter
• The revolution in strong lensing discoveries from Euclid
• The "Little Dark Dot": Evidence for Self-interacting Dark Matter in the Strong Lens SDSS J0946+1006?
• A dense dark matter core of the subhalo in the strong lensing system JVAS B1938+666
• DARKSKIES: A suite of super-sampled zoom-in simulations of galaxy clusters with self-interacting dark matter
• Macromodel-free flux-ratio prediction in quadruply imaged quasars with local constraints from lensed arcs
• The AIDA-TNG project: dark matter profiles and concentrations in alternative dark matter models
• Investigation of mass substructure in gravitational lens system SDP.81 with ALMA long-baseline observations
• Using Strong Lensing to Detect Subhalos with Steep Inner Density Profiles
• Self-Interacting Dark Matter with Mass Segregation: A Unified Explanation of Dwarf Cores and Small-Scale Lenses
• Measuring the Stellar-to-Halo Mass Relation at $\sim 10^{10}$ Solar masses, using forthcoming space-based imaging of galaxy-galaxy strong lenses
• Identification of gravitational lenses obscured by foreground light in the KiDS dataset using U-Nets and ResNets