Is Cold Dark Matter Still a Strong Buy? The Lesson from Galaxy Clusters

For the last few years the Cold Dark Matter model (ticker: CDM), has been the dominant theory of structure formation. We briefly review the recent advancements and predictions of the model in the field of galaxy clusters. A new set of very high resolution simulations of galaxy clusters show that the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2001-05
Main Authors: Governato, Fabio, Ghigna, Sebastiano, Moore, Ben
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cold dark matter
Computer simulation
Cosmology
Dark matter
Dependence
Galactic clusters
Galaxies
Mathematical models
Star & galaxy formation
Substructures
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Summary:For the last few years the Cold Dark Matter model (ticker: CDM), has been the dominant theory of structure formation. We briefly review the recent advancements and predictions of the model in the field of galaxy clusters. A new set of very high resolution simulations of galaxy clusters show that they have (1) density profiles with central slopes very close to -1.6 and (2) abundance of subhalos similar to the ones observed in real clusters. These results show a remarkably small cluster to cluster variation and a weak dependence from the particular CDM cosmology chosen (LCDM having ~40% less substructure than SCDM). While still a speculative theory with a high prediction/evidence ratio, subject to strong challenges from observational data and competition from other hierarchical theories, we give CDM a rating of ``market outperform'' and of ``long term BUY''.
ISSN:2331-8422