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Title:
Dark Matter Substructure: Cosmological Treasure Trove or a Pandora's Box?

Speaker:
Frank van den Bosch

Abstract:
Hierarchical structure formation in a LCDM cosmology gives rise to virialized dark matter halos that contain a wealth of subtructure. Being able to accurately predict the abundance and demographics of dark matter subhaloes is of paramount importance for many fields of astrophysics: gravitational lensing, galaxy evolution, and even constraining the nature of dark matter. Dark matter substructure is subject to tidal stripping and tidal heating, which are highly non-linear processes and therefore best studied using numerical N-body simulations. Unfortunately, as I will demonstrate, state-of-the-art cosmological simulations are unable to adequately resolve the dynamical evolution of dark matter substructure. They suffer from a dramatic amount of artificial subhalo disruption as a consequence of both inadequate force softening and discreteness noise amplification in the presence of a tidal field. I discuss implications for a variety of astrophysical applications, and briefly discuss potential ways forward. http://www.ias.edu/sns/~seminar/colloquia.shtml

Link:
https://www.ias.edu/video/jointastro/2016/1213-FrankvandenBosch