Paper detail

Comparing rotation curve observations to hydrodynamic ΛCDM simulations of galaxies

The formation of the disk and feedback from supernova winds impacts the distribution of dark matter in galaxies. Recently, Di Cintio et al. (2014b) characterized the halo response from baryonic processes in hydrodynamical simulations via a dependence on the ratio of stellar-to-halo mass ($M_{\star}/M_{\rm halo}$). The (stellar) mass dependent halo profile links together the local and global properties of the halo (e.g. inner slope and $M_{\rm halo}$) which allows for measurements of $M_{\rm halo}$ without virial tracers. We compile a large sample of rotation curves from the literature to test this halo profile. We find that this halo profile can explain rotation curve observations over a wide range of $M_{\star}$. However, the global results from our sample are inconsistent with a $Λ$ cold dark matter universe. We do not find the expected correlation between the halo concentration and $M_{\rm halo}$ and there is significantly larger scatter than expected. Furthermore, a large portion of galaxies below $M_{\star} \sim 10^{9}\,M_{\odot}$ are found to be hosted by smaller halos than expectations from the abundance matching technique. We find our results are robust to statistical priors and systematic effects such as inclination angle, asymmetric drift correction, data source, and uncertainties in stellar mass-to-light ratios. This suggests either a mischaracterization of the halo response due to baryonic processes or additional non-standard dark matter physics.