Most Matter is Dark Matter, but that's not all that Matters

Colloquium: Astronomy Colloquia | November 1 | 4-5 p.m. | 2 LeConte Hall

Speaker/Performer: Michael Kuhlen, UC Berkeley

Sponsor: Department of Astronomy

High resolution simulations of Galactic Cold Dark Matter halos reveal
huge amounts of substructure, both in configuration space (subhalos)
and in velocity space (tidal streams and debris flow). This
substructure has important consequences for efforts aiming to detect
non-gravitational signatures of dark matter in the sky and in
Earth-bound underground laboratories. In this talk I will first review
predictions from ultra-high resolution dark matter-only simulations,
and then describe two examples of how the inclusion of baryonic
physics in simulations alters these expectations. One example is the
abundance of massive subhalos, where baryonic physics may help to
reconcile the predictions from DM-only simulations with the relatively
low number of observed bright Milky Way dwarf satellite galaxies. The
other example is the surprising result that baryonic physics may lead
to an offset between the point of maximum dark matter density and the
dynamical center of the Galaxy, which could significantly alter
theoretical expectations for the dark matter annihilation signal from
the Galactic Center.

Event Contact: rhelgens@astro.berkeley.edu, 510-642-5275