The nature of dark matter and the density profile and central behavior of relaxed halos

Abstract

We show that the two basic assumptions of the model recently proposed by Manrique and coworkers for the universal density profile of cold dark matter (CDM) halos, namely that these objects grow inside out in periods of smooth accretion and that their mass profile and its radial derivatives are all continuous functions, are both well understood in terms of the very nature of CDM. Those two assumptions allow one to derive the typical density profile of halos of a given mass from the accretion rate characteristic of the particular cosmology. This profile was shown by Manrique and coworkers to recover the results of numerical simulations. In the present paper, we investigate its behavior beyond the ranges covered by present-day N-body simulations. We find that the central asymptotic logarithmic slope depends crucially on the shape of the power spectrum of density perturbations: it is equal to a constant negative value for power-law spectra and has central cores for the standard CDM power spectrum. The predicted density profile in the CDM case is well fitted by the 3D Sérsic profile over at least 10 decades in halo mass. The values of the Sérsic parameters depend on the mass of the structure considered. A practical procedure is provided that allows one to infer the typical values of the best NFW or Sérsic fitting law parameters for halos of any mass and redshift in any given standard CDM cosmology.

9 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the ApJ vol. 647, september 20, 2007. Minor changes to match the published version