Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 021301 (2004) [4 pages]Are Halos of Collisionless Cold Dark Matter Collisionless?Received 2 March 2004; revised 6 May 2004; published 9 July 2004 We study whether gravitational scattering of halo dark matter particlesby subhalos can connect two seemingly independent problems: the abundanceof subhalos in dark matter halos and the cuspiness of the halos’ inner densityprofiles. Our numerical experiments indicate that subhalos can cause the collisionlessdark matter particles in the centers of main halos to diffuse. Combined withtidal mass loss of the subhalos, this process introduces significant scatterin the inner density profiles and offers an explanation for the range of profilesseen in both observations and cosmological simulations. © 2004 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.021301
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.021301
PACS:
95.35.+d, 95.75.–z, 98.62.Gq
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