Speakers
Description
- Chair: Reuben Blaff
- Co-Chair: Sean Tulin
Mentor: Nassim Bozorgnia
Junior Mentor: Yilber Fabian Bautista
In this project, we will use cosmological simulations of self-interacting dark matter (including baryons) to study the dark matter distribution in Milky Way–like galaxies. The complicated interplay between astrophysical processes and dark matter self-interactions can result in dark matter distributions which are quite different from those extracted from collisionless dark matter simulations. The results will be important for the interpretation of data from dark matter direct and indirect detection experiments. We can access the data for simulated Milky Way size galaxies in EAGLE cosmological simulations including dark matter self-interactions.
Main tasks: 1. Access the simulation data of dark matter particle positions and velocities in the halo.
2. Compute rotation curves of simulated galaxies and fit them to observed rotation curve data. ---> Specify the simulated galaxies which fit the observed data better.
3. Define the “solar neighborhood” in the simulated galaxy and extract the DM velocity distribution and DM density.
4. Compare the velocity distribution to the usual Maxwellian distribution assumed in the Standard Halo Model.
5. Fit the velocity distribution with some known functional forms.
6. Compute the “halo integral” which is the quantity that enters in the event rate of dark matter direct detection experiments.
