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Baryon-driven decontraction in Milky Way-mass haloes

Forouhar Moreno, Victor J; Benítez-Llambay, Alejandro; Cole, Shaun; Frenk, Carlos

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Authors

Victor J Forouhar Moreno

Alejandro Benítez-Llambay



Abstract

We select a sample of Milky Way (MW) mass haloes from a high-resolution version of the EAGLE simulation to study their inner dark matter (DM) content and how baryons alter it. As in previous studies, we find that all haloes are more massive at the centre compared to their dark matter-only (DMO) counterparts at the present day as a result of the dissipational collapse of baryons during the assembly of the galaxy. However, we identify two processes that can reduce the central halo mass during the evolution of the galaxy. First, gas blowouts induced by active galactic nuclei feedback can lead to a substantial decrease of the central DM mass. Secondly, the formation of a stellar bar and its interaction with the DM can induce a secular expansion of the halo; the rate at which DM is evacuated from the central region by this process is related to the average bar strength, and the time-scale on which it acts determines how much the halo has decontracted. Although the inner regions of the haloes we have investigated are still more massive than their DMO counterparts at z = 0, they are significantly less massive than in the past and less massive than expected from the classic adiabatic contraction model. Since the MW has both a central supermassive black hole and a bar, the extent to which its halo has contracted is uncertain. This may affect estimates of the mass of the MW halo and of the expected signals in direct and indirect DM detection experiments.

Citation

Forouhar Moreno, V. J., Benítez-Llambay, A., Cole, S., & Frenk, C. (2022). Baryon-driven decontraction in Milky Way-mass haloes. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 511(3), 3910-3921. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac312

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 1, 2022
Online Publication Date Feb 3, 2022
Publication Date 2022
Deposit Date Jun 21, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jun 21, 2022
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 511
Issue 3
Pages 3910-3921
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac312
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1200511

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.






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