Bibcode
Breddels, Maarten A.; Helmi, A.; van den Bosch, R. C. E.; van de Ven, G.; Battaglia, G.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 433, Issue 4, p.3173-3189
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8
2013
Citations
89
Refereed citations
77
Description
We have developed spherically symmetric dynamical models of dwarf
spheroidal (dSph) galaxies using Schwarzschild's orbit superposition
method. This type of modelling yields constraints both on the total mass
distribution (e.g. enclosed mass and scale radius) and on the orbital
structure of the system (e.g. velocity anisotropy). This method is thus
less prone to biases introduced by assumptions in comparison to the more
commonly used Jeans modelling, and it allows us to put reliable
constraints on their dark matter content. Here we present our results
for the Sculptor dSph galaxy, after testing our methods on mock data
sets. We fit both the second and fourth velocity moment profiles to
break the mass-anisotropy degeneracy. For an Navarro, Frenk & White
(NFW) dark matter halo profile, we find that the mass of Sculptor within
1 kpc is M1 kpc = (1.03 ± 0.07) × 108
M⊙, and that its velocity anisotropy profile is
tangentially biased and nearly constant for radii beyond ˜100 pc.
The preferred concentration (c ˜ 15) is low for its dark matter
mass but consistent within the scatter found in N-body cosmological
simulations. When we let the value of the central logarithmic slope
α vary, we find that the best-fitting model has α = 0,
although an NFW cusp or shallower is consistent at the 1σ
confidence level. On the other hand, very cuspy density profiles with
logarithmic central slopes α < -1.5 are strongly disfavoured
for Sculptor.