Searching for streams in dark matter
Rob Thacker
St-Mary's University

Deep imaging of M31 now shows numerous streams of stellar matter formed during the disruption of satellite galaxies. Dark matter halos, being formed of collisionless matter much likes stars, are also anticipated to show stream-like structures. The presence or lack of these streams has significant ramifications for dark matter searches. Thus understanding the properties of streams in simulated dark matter halos is of great interest. However, identifying the streams within a dynamically active dark matter halo is a challenge. In this talk I will describe a new algorithm we have developed to find these streams in dark matter halos. It improves upon previous approaches by comparing the local velocity structure of dark matter halo to a smoothed background estimate. Depending upon the test case, recovery "purity" can exceed 98%.

Date:	Vendredi, 18 mars 2011
Time:	12:00
Where:	Université Laval
	Pavillon Alexandre-Vachon, local 1661
Contact:	Serge Pinault