THE DARK MATTER PROFILE OF THE MILKY WAY: A NON-PARAMETRIC RECONSTRUCTION
- The Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics, Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm (Sweden)
- ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research, and Instituto de Física Teórica—Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Rua Dr. Bento Teobaldo Ferraz 271, 01140-070 São Paulo, SP (Brazil)
We present the results of a new, non-parametric method to reconstruct the Galactic dark matter profile directly from observations. Using the latest kinematic data to track the total gravitational potential and the observed distribution of stars and gas to set the baryonic component, we infer the dark matter contribution to the circular velocity across the Galaxy. The radial derivative of this dynamical contribution is then estimated to extract the dark matter profile. The innovative feature of our approach is that it makes no assumption on the functional form or shape of the profile, thus allowing for a clean determination with no theoretical bias. We illustrate the power of the method by constraining the spherical dark matter profile between 2.5 and 25 kpc away from the Galactic center. The results show that the proposed method, free of widely used assumptions, can already be applied to pinpoint the dark matter distribution in the Milky Way with competitive accuracy, and paves the way for future developments.
- OSTI ID:
- 22518696
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 803, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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