We present results from three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the
high redshift collapse of pregalactic clouds including feedback effects from a
soft H2 photodissociating UV radiation field. The simulations use an Eulerian
adaptive mesh refinement technique to follow the nonequilibrium chemistry of
nine chemical species with cosmological initial conditions drawn from a popular
Lambda-dominated cold dark matter model. The results confirm that the soft UV
background can delay the cooling and collapse of small halos (~10^6 Msun). For
reasonable values of the photo-dissociating flux, the H2 fraction is in
equilibrium throughout most of the objects we simulate. We determine the mass
threshold for collapse for a range of soft-UV fluxes and also derive a simple
analytic expression. Continuing the simulations beyond the point of initial
collapse demonstrates that the fraction of gas which can cool depends mostly on
the virial mass of the halo and the amount of soft-UV flux, with remarkably
little scatter. We parameterize this relation, for use in semi-analytic models.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Ap
Spergel and Steinhardt have recently proposed the concept of dark matter with strong self-interactions as a means to address numerous discrepancies between observations of dark matter halos on subgalactic scales and the predictions of the standard collisionless dark matter picture. We review the motivations for this scenario and discuss some recent, successful numerical tests. We also discuss the possibility that the dark matter interacts strongly with ordinary baryonic matter, as well as with itself. We present a new analysis of the experimental constraints and re-evaluate the allowed range of cross-section and mass.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.