Kavli Affiliate: Mark Vogelsberger
| First 5 Authors: Aidan Leonard, Stephanie O’Neil, Xuejian Shen, Mark Vogelsberger, Olivia Rosenstein
| Summary:
Self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) is increasingly studied as a potential
solution to small-scale discrepancies between simulations of cold dark matter
(CDM) and observations. We examine a physically motivated two-state SIDM model
with both elastic and inelastic scatterings. In particular, endothermic,
exothermic, and elastic scattering occur with equal probability at high
relative velocities ($v_{rm rel}gtrsim400~{rm km/s})$. In a suite of
cosmological zoom-in simulation of Milky Way-size haloes, we vary the
primordial state fractions to understand the impact of inelastic dark matter
self-interactions on halo structure and evolution. In particular, we test how
the initial conditions impact the present-day properties of dark matter haloes.
Depending on the primordial state fraction, scattering reactions will be
dominated by either exothermic or endothermic effects for high and low initial
excited state fractions respectively. We find that increasing the initial
excited fraction reduces the mass of the main halo, as well as the number of
subhaloes on all mass scales. The main haloes are cored, with lower inner
densities and higher outer densities compared with CDM. Additionally, we find
that the shape of the main halo becomes more spherical the higher the initial
excited state fraction is. Finally, we show that the number of satellites
steadily decreases with initial excited state fraction across all satellite
masses.
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