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Super cuspy dark matter halos of massive galaxies due to baryon-driven contraction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2025

Pengfei Li Open the ORCID record for Pengfei Li [Opens in a new window]
Pengfei Li*
Affiliation:
Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
*
email: pli@aip.de
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Abstract

The interplay between dark matter (DM) and baryons has long been ignored when building galaxies semi-empirically and observationally. Here I show that baryonic gravity leads to an adiabatic contraction of DM halos, which is most significant in massive galaxies. Ignoring this effect, the derived DM halos are not guaranteed in dynamical equilibrium. I present a new approach to deriving DM halos from rotation curves, which incorporates the adiabatic contraction. The compressed halos turn out super cuspy with respect to NFW halos, which require smaller baryonic contributions and less concentrated primordial halos. I also examine the semi-empirical approach to building galaxies, and find the adiabatic contraction can shift massive galaxies from the observed radial acceleration relation dramatically. Both approaches lead to super cuspy DM halos for massive galaxies, demonstrating the importance of the baryon-driven contraction, which has to be taken into account in order to make an apple-to-apple comparison with simulations.

Keywords

dark mattergalaxies: kinematics and dynamicsgalaxies: dwarfgalaxies: spiralgalaxies: irregular

Information

Type
Contributed Paper
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 19 , Symposium S379: Dynamical Masses of Local Group Galaxies , December 2023 , pp. 347 - 352
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Astronomical Union

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