A possible challenge for Cold and Warm Dark Matter

Abstract

Measuring the density profile and mass concentration of dark-matter haloes is a key test of the standard cold dark matter paradigm. Such objects are dark and thus challenging to characterise, but they can be studied via gravitational lensing. Recently, a million-solar-mass object was discovered superposed on an extended and extremely thin gravitational arc. Here we report on extensive tests of various assumptions for the mass density profile and redshift of this object. We find models that best describe the data have two components: an unresolved point-mass of radius $\le 10$ pc centred on an extended mass distribution with an almost constant surface density out to a truncation radius of 139 pc. These properties do not resemble any known astronomical object. However, if the object is dark matter-dominated, its structure is incompatible with cold dark matter models, but may be compatible with a self-interacting dark matter halo where the central region has collapsed to form a black hole. This detection could thus carry substantial implications for our current understanding of dark matter.

Accepted for publication on Nature Astronomy - See companion papers: McKean et al. (2025) https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slaf039 and Powell et al. (2025) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02651-2

References in corpus (37)

• The Aquarius Project: the subhalos of galactic halos
• Dark matter halo concentrations in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe year 5 cosmology
• The haloes of bright satellite galaxies in a warm dark matter universe
• Gravitational detection of a low-mass dark satellite at cosmological distance
• Detection of a Dark Substructure through Gravitational Imaging
• Bayesian Strong Gravitational-Lens Modeling on Adaptive Grids: Objective Detection of Mass Substructure in Galaxies
• The central region of the Fornax cluster -- II. Spectroscopy and radial velocities of member and background galaxies
• Self-Interacting Dark Matter Halos and the Gravothermal Catastrophe
• The AIMSS Project I: Bridging the Star Cluster - Galaxy Divide
• Accelerated core collapse in tidally stripped self-interacting dark matter halos
• Modeling evolution of dark matter substructure and annihilation boost
• Diversity in density profiles of self-interacting dark matter satellite halos
• Core-collapse, evaporation and tidal effects: the life story of a self-interacting dark matter subhalo
• The diverse dark matter density at sub-kiloparsec scales in Milky Way satellites:implications for the nature of dark matter
• The Onset of Gravothermal Core Collapse in Velocity Dependent Self-Interacting Dark Matter Subhaloes
• Molecular Gas in Lensed z>2 Quasar Host Galaxies and the Star Formation Law for Galaxies with Luminous Active Galactic Nuclei
• Exploring the physical properties of lensed star-forming clumps at $2\lesssim z\lesssim 6$
• Halo Substructure Boosts to the Signatures of Dark Matter Annihilation
• Evidence for a bottom-light initial mass function in massive star clusters
• A complete infrared Einstein ring in the gravitational lens system B1938+666
• Universal gravothermal evolution of isolated self-interacting dark matter halos for velocity-dependent cross sections
• Substructure Detection Reanalyzed: Dark Perturber shown to be a Line-of-Sight Halo
• 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
• Sub-parsec resolution cosmological simulations of star-forming clumps at high redshift with feedback of individual stars
• Resolving on 100 pc scales the UV-continuum in Lyman-$\alpha$ emitters between redshift 2 to 3 with gravitational lensing
• An evolutionary continuum from nucleated dwarf galaxies to star clusters
• Tidal radii of globular clusters and the mass of the Milky Way
• LCDM halo substructure properties revealed with high resolution and large volume cosmological simulations
• A Parametric Model for Self-Interacting Dark Matter Halos
• SHARP -- VI. Evidence for CO (1-0) molecular gas extended on kpc-scales in AGN star forming galaxies at high redshift
• The halo mass function in alternative dark matter models
• Detecting low-mass haloes with strong gravitational lensing II: constraints on the density profiles of two detected subhaloes
• A million-solar-mass object detected at cosmological distance using gravitational imaging
• SHARP -- IX. The dense, low-mass perturbers in B1938+666 and J0946+1006: implications for cold and self-interacting dark matter
• An extended and extremely thin gravitational arc from a lensed compact symmetric object at redshift 2.059

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Investigating cosmic strings using large-volume hydrodynamical simulations in the context of JWST's massive UV-bright galaxies
• Measurement of Substructure from the Kinematics of the GD-1 Stellar Stream
• New Cold Dark Matter Crisis Revealed by Multiscale Cluster Lensing
• Fuzzy dark matter soliton core hosting a supermassive black hole as a dense low-mass perturber in strong gravitational lensing