CTIO  > Science Talks  >  Abstracts

Rachel Kuzio de Naray
Royal Military College of Canada, Physics Department
& NOAO South Visiting Astronomer
 

"Dark Matter in Low Surface Brightness Galaxies"
 

Low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies exhibit large mass discrepancies down to small radii, making them excellent laboratories for measuring the mass distribution of dark matter halos.  I will discuss high resolution Halpha Integral Field Unit (IFU) velocity field data that show that these galaxies tend to be more consistent with cored halos than cuspy Cold Dark Matter halos, at odds with collisionless simulations.  I will also discuss how mock IFU velocity field observations of N-body/SPH galaxy simulations can be used to test the hypothesis that cusps can be obscured by triaxial dark matter halos.  Finally, I will discuss if baryonic processes could be responsible for modifying the dark matter halos of LSB galaxies..