Dynamics of self-gravitating halos with decaying dark matter
Abstract
We study the evolution of self-gravitating spherical dark matter halos composed of dark matter particles that decay to a slightly less massive particle and a massless particle. The small kick velocity imparted to the daughter particle upon decay heats the halo. If the kick velocity is small compared with the characteristic velocity, the halo remains bound but puffs out. We also consider, for the first time, decaying halos with anisotropic initial conditions and find non-negligible effects on the resulting density profile. To simulate the halo evolution, we utilize the recently developed \texttt{NSphere} code across a broad range of decay times and kick velocities. We train an emulator to provide a mapping between the decay parameters and the relaxed density profile. We discuss how the resulting halo-scale signatures complement existing cosmological constraints on decaying dark matter and can be tested by upcoming surveys.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{bencke2026dynamics,
title = {{Dynamics of self-gravitating halos with decaying dark matter}},
author = {Anna Bencke and Marc Kamionkowski and Annika H. G. Peter and Juniper Morales},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.05474},
eprint = {2611.05474},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.05474},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Dynamics of self-gravitating halos with decaying dark matter
AU - Anna Bencke
AU - Marc Kamionkowski
AU - Annika H. G. Peter
AU - Juniper Morales
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/03
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.05474
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.05474
AB - We study the evolution of self-gravitating spherical dark matter halos composed of dark matter particles that decay to a slightly less massive particle and a massless particle. The small kick velocity imparted to the daughter particle upon decay heats the halo. If the kick velocity is small compared with the characteristic velocity, the halo remains bound but puffs out. We also consider, for the first time, decaying halos with anisotropic initial conditions and find non-negligible effects on the resulting density profile. To simulate the halo evolution, we utilize the recently developed \texttt{NSphere} code across a broad range of decay times and kick velocities. We train an emulator to provide a mapping between the decay parameters and the relaxed density profile. We discuss how the resulting halo-scale signatures complement existing cosmological constraints on decaying dark matter and can be tested by upcoming surveys.
ER -