Assume standard radiation-dominated expansion, negligible chemical potential, one neutrino helicity and one antineutrino helicity, and a stable species with no later entropy injection. Use natural units and unreduced Planck mass . The relativistic energy density is . The Friedmann equation then gives
For thermal decoupling in cosmology, equate the interaction rate to :
This order-of-magnitude estimate assumes the supplied rate law remains applicable there.
A decoupled relativistic species cools as , while annihilations heat the coupled bath. Treat the supplied high-temperature count as the remaining bath's entropy count, approximately equal to its energy count. Cosmological entropy conservation down to ordinary neutrino decoupling gives
Subsequent electron-positron annihilation in cosmology heats photons but neither neutrino population. Therefore the two-stage entropy dilution of an early-decoupled neutrino gives
The ordinary Cosmic neutrino background has . If the rounded count instead includes the new two helicities, the remaining bath count is ; this changes the answer only slightly, to about . Keeping the extra species' entropy separate is essential in either convention.
For the two relativistic fermion states, . Photon and three standard neutrino species have present entropy degrees of freedom, referred to ,
Writing , the fractional entropy of a relativistically decoupled species is
Thus approximately 1.7% of the thermal particle entropy is in the new neutrinos and antineutrinos. If counts all states before the new decoupling, the fraction is . These are the same rounded estimate. The question concerns the radiation/relic thermal entropy budget; it does not supply a model for entropy in later black holes or other gravitational structures.
If has a small mass but decoupled relativistically, its comoving particle number is still conserved. The relativistic-neutrino number-density ratio gives
Once nonrelativistic, . The density bound on a relativistically decoupled massive relic is therefore
Using the standard present photon abundance and critical-density normalization, this is approximately , where is the present Hubble normalization, not a magnetic field. A stable relic must not exceed the permitted matter density; for example, if , even assigning all matter to it gives only an order- mass ceiling.
A stronger restriction can follow from neutrino free streaming and the observed formation of large-scale structure of the universe: a light thermal population acts as hot rather than cold dark matter, erasing structure below its streaming scale. If at most a fraction of the matter may be in this population, replace the overclosure ceiling by . The allowed fraction is observational input and is not supplied, so the paper does not determine a unique tighter mass limit. A species still relativistic today is radiation rather than matter; its contribution to the effective number of neutrino species is , and must instead satisfy the radiation-density constraints. These conclusions assume stable thermally populated states; decay or nonstandard entropy histories change the bounds.
Four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetry is compatible with a chiral gauge spectrum. Each matter Weyl spinor belongs to a chiral superfield with a complex scalar in the same gauge representation, and each gauge boson belongs to a vector multiplet with an adjoint gaugino. Thus a supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model predicts squarks, sleptons and gauge-fermion partners, together with Higgs-sector partners. Exact unbroken supersymmetry would make partners mass-degenerate, so a phenomenologically useful model needs supersymmetry breaking.
The Minimal supersymmetric Standard Model uses two Higgs chiral doublets. Holomorphy of the superpotential prevents use of the conjugate of one doublet as an independent chiral field, so up-type and down-type Yukawa couplings require opposite-hypercharge doublets. Their higgsinos also cancel each other's gauge anomalies. The superpotential has the schematic form
with gauge contractions understood. Supersymmetry relates the scalar quartic interactions and Yukawa interactions to the same gauge and superpotential couplings, rather than allowing arbitrary independent choices.
A central motivation is the hierarchy problem. A nonsupersymmetric scalar mass can receive corrections proportional to a high ultraviolet cutoff squared. The paired bosonic and fermionic loops in exact supersymmetry cancel that quadratic sensitivity. Soft supersymmetry breaking introduces scalar squared masses, gaugino masses and appropriate scalar bilinear and trilinear terms without restoring the original quadratic divergence. With a typical soft scale , residual corrections have the schematic size
plus finite thresholds. This favors not excessively heavy partners if one wishes to avoid a new tuning, but does not derive their masses or guarantee that they are experimentally accessible. A hidden breaking sector can communicate soft terms through gauge or gravitational interactions.
The altered particle spectrum also changes the renormalization group evolution of the gauge couplings. The MSSM one-loop coefficients, with the usual grand-unified hypercharge normalization, are in . They allow approximate supersymmetric gauge coupling unification near GeV, subject to threshold corrections. Top-Yukawa effects can drive the up-type Higgs squared mass negative and help produce radiative electroweak symmetry breaking. Neither phenomenon alone specifies a full breaking mechanism.
Without an additional symmetry, gauge invariance allows renormalizable baryon- or lepton-number violating superpotential terms. Conserved R-parity, , forbids the usual such renormalizable terms, distinguishes ordinary particles from their superpartners, and makes the lightest supersymmetric particle stable. A neutral stable lightest partner can be a dark matter candidate; its abundance and interactions require a separate calculation. Pair production followed by cascades to such a particle can give missing-momentum signals. R-parity is an extra model assumption, and does not by itself exclude all higher-dimensional proton-decay operators.
Possible low-energy consequences are a partner spectrum, controlled scalar-mass sensitivity, a constrained Higgs sector, modified coupling evolution and, with conserved R-parity, a stable lightest partner. Soft parameters also affect flavor-changing and CP-violating processes. Supersymmetry provides relations and mechanisms, not a unique numerical spectrum or an automatic solution to every flavor or cosmological problem.
First consider a genuinely one-dimensional, time-independent collisionless stellar system with Hamiltonian . Choose . For bound vertical oscillations, a phase-mixed population has equal occupations of the upward and downward branches of each orbit. By Jeans theorem, its stationary distribution is a function of the conserved vertical energy, . Equivalently, the one-dimensional Collisionless Boltzmann equation makes constant along the energy curves. Branch-dependent incoming and outgoing populations or time-dependent waves would not satisfy this assumption.
Integrate both signs of and change variable to :
The density is thus an Abel transform of the vertical-energy distribution. To invert it without simply quoting an inversion rule, apply a second integral and exchange its order:
The inner integral is , as follows by setting . Writing before differentiating avoids an artificial infinite endpoint term. Under sufficient differentiability and decay,
The vertical-energy Abel inversion of a stellar distribution is therefore
This proves the normalization, including the factor from the two velocity signs. The additive origin of merely changes the origin of energy.
For this expression to define a physical phase-space distribution function, must be expressible as a single-valued function of , the integrals and differentiated integral must converge, and the resulting must be nonnegative. Reflection symmetry and a potential increasing with provide the usual single-valued relation on either side of the disk. A sufficiently smooth decreasing is a sufficient condition for nonnegativity; it is not asserted to be necessary for every positive energy distribution. If there is a finite escape energy, replace the infinite limits by that energy and impose the appropriate cutoff and boundary conditions. The displayed infinite-limit formula presumes either a confining potential or a distribution extended by zero above its allowed energy, with no omitted boundary population.
A three-dimensional galactic disk does not automatically meet these hypotheses. Exact separation makes an integral of motion. If the full galactic distribution function factorizes into an in-plane factor and a vertical factor , integrating the in-plane velocities gives the required one-dimensional distribution after its normalization is absorbed into . More generally the vertical marginal must depend only on in the sample being analysed. Near the solar radius, approximate separation can be useful when the sampled heights and radial excursions are small relative to the scales over which the vertical force changes with . If only a slowly varying vertical action is conserved, replacing it by one fixed requires an additional controlled local approximation.
The population must be sufficiently stationary and phase mixed, with negligible mean vertical flow, and the data must measure a well-defined tracer population with a known selection function. Radial coupling and the tilted velocity ellipsoid must be negligible or modelled. In the full vertical Jeans equation, that coupling is ; it cannot generally be discarded merely because a mixed moment vanishes at the midplane. The tracer number density is not the mass density producing the potential.
To infer the local mass, measure the tracer density as a function of height and its vertical velocity distribution near the midplane. With , the latter directly samples . Insert that measured distribution into the forward integral for , and match it to the observed to infer . Equivalently, for trial potentials compute away from the plane, apply the inversion, and require agreement with the measured velocities. Density data alone do not determine both an unknown potential and an unknown energy distribution.
Once the vertical force is known, use the full axisymmetric Poisson equation for Newtonian gravity, rather than identifying every vertical derivative with density in isolation:
At the midplane, , so
In terms of the circular-orbit Oort constants, and , the radial term equals . It vanishes for a locally flat rotation curve, not for an arbitrary rotating disk. An integrated version gives the dynamical surface density from vertical stellar motions:
Here the actual vertical acceleration is . The sign of the radial correction follows directly from the Poisson equation for Newtonian gravity.
For an illustrative isothermal tracer with constant vertical velocity dispersion , take
The velocity integral gives , hence . For a locally flat rotation curve this yields
This example shows explicitly how a measured tracer scale and velocity scale constrain the gravitating density; using the tracer's own density as the mass source would instead impose an unjustified self-gravitating model.
The inferred density includes luminous and faint stars, gas and dark matter. Comparing it with an independently estimated baryonic census tests for extra gravitating mass. An excess need not be a dark disk: a dark matter halo also contributes to the local force. Conversely, agreement with the baryonic density locally does not exclude a halo at other radii or heights. Vertical disequilibrium, radial mixing, errors in selection or tracer populations, and neglected velocity tilt can mimic a mass discrepancy, so the one-dimensional equilibrium assumptions must be tested when interpreting such an inference.
Cosmic shear is the small, statistically correlated distortion of distant galaxy images by weak gravitational lensing from intervening large-scale matter inhomogeneities. An individual galaxy has an unknown intrinsic shape, so the signal is measured through ensemble shape correlations rather than by assuming every source is circular. The angular and redshift dependence of these correlations probes the projected matter fluctuations, their growth and the angular diameter distance relation, constraining dark matter, cosmological density parameters and dark energy. Gravitational lensing responds to all gravitating matter rather than just luminous tracers. Intrinsic alignments and shape-measurement biases must be modeled separately from the lensing signal; the physical and statistical basis is described in arxiv.org/abs/1411.0115 .
The host mass inside follows from the same singular isothermal sphere:
Using the supplied host luminosity gives
This treats essentially all the stated optical light as contained in that aperture; a measured luminosity profile would refine that convention. Keeping consistent unrounded quantities,
Thus the dwarf ratio is about twenty times the parent ratio; the rough equal-density tidal convention would give a factor thirty.
There is no logical contradiction in two objects sharing but having different mass-to-light ratios. A virial theorem scaling gives , so that . Equal ratios additionally require homologous relevant radii scaling as . Here the satellite's tidal radius scales as in the fixed host field, not as . Equating the two ratios would require , far smaller than the derived tidal radius.
The heuristic derivation of the Faber-Jackson relation with common mass-to-light ratio and common surface brightness made auxiliary structural assumptions; the empirical relation alone cannot enforce them. Furthermore, the aperture dependence of mass-to-light ratio matters: a satellite's whole tidal mass and a host's halo mass are not homologous half-light-aperture masses. Dark matter need not follow stellar light, and a dwarf spheroidal galaxy is not automatically a scaled giant elliptical galaxy. The model calculates total gravitating mass: reading its density literally as stars alone would imply an implausibly large purely stellar ratio, exposing the limits of that interpretation.
Use the classical Faber-Jackson relation as the explicitly requested extrapolation. The supplied host fixes its normalization:
With the mass derived using circular-orbit Jacobi truncation of two singular isothermal spheres, the dynamical mass-to-light ratio is
Hence to one significant figure
The rough equal-density truncation convention gives instead. Both conclusions indicate a very large dynamical mass-to-light ratio compared with a normal old stellar population.
Within their bright stellar bodies, typical giant elliptical galaxies have optical dynamical mass-to-light ratios of order a few to ten in solar units, with variations in band, initial mass function, and dark matter. Large outer apertures can give substantially larger ratios. Many dwarf spheroidal galaxies have much larger inferred ratios, from tens to hundreds and, for some very faint systems, still larger values. Thus the computed ratio is plausible as the scale of a very dark-matter-dominated faint dwarf, not as a purely stellar ratio. Dynamical inference depends on member identification, binary motions, equilibrium, and the assumed mass profile.
The stipulated Faber-Jackson relation is not a reliable universal extrapolation down to every dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Also, the fundamental plane of elliptical galaxies contains radius and surface brightness as well as velocity dispersion; the two-variable Faber-Jackson relation is a projection of that information, not an interchangeable definition of the full plane.
Let be the dark matter particle mass, so its number density is . Interpret as total emitted power per particle, and assume isotropic optically thin dark-matter decay radiation; volume emissivity is . At projected radius , a line-of-sight coordinate has . Writing , the surface brightness is
Here turns the integral into . For the isothermal outer halo,
If emissivity was defined per unit solid angle, the factor is already included in ; this only changes the normalization. The radial law holds between any core and outer truncation. For example, a phenomenological cored profile gives : finite central surface brightness, but the same outer law. This cored interpolation is not being asserted to be the exact isotropic constant-dispersion equilibrium.
Measure the logarithmic surface brightness slope in resolved radial annuli after accounting for instrumental blurring and foreground emission. Between a halo core and its outer boundary, dark-matter decay radiation predicts , whereas dark-matter annihilation radiation predicts ; doubling radius therefore reduces the respective surface brightness by factors and . These are quantitative templates to compare with independently mapped stellar and gaseous components.
An exponential galactic disk has , so and . At the latter is about , much faster decline than either halo template, and the projected emission should also be flattened along the galactic disk. A galactic bulge described by a Sérsic profile has ; for and , this is about at and continues to steepen, whereas a pure halo power law keeps a fixed slope.
For a stellar halo with outer luminosity density proportional to , the projection of a spherical power-law emissivity gives . Illustratively, -- gives projected slopes --: then rises strongly outward, but annihilation can resemble the steeper stellar template. Gas-related gamma emission must be compared with observed gas columns and the cosmic ray distribution; it is not always proportional to optical light.
A shallow, extended, approximately spherical component is particularly distinctive; an component needs additional evidence. Fit the stellar, gas and halo templates together over a broad radial range, including morphology and emission spectra. A measured slope alone cannot uniquely identify dark matter, since stellar or gas profiles can coincide with a halo slope over a limited interval.
The result is in the broad range expected for an old, relatively faint stellar population, but is high compared with many observed stellar mass-to-light ratios of a few solar units in optical bands. The comparison must specify the band and whether the measured mass includes dark matter: for example, early-type galaxy dynamical measurements find an -band normalization near solar units at velocity dispersion , including a contribution from dark matter. That is an illustrative observational comparison, not a direct equality with a bolometric stellar calculation.
For an old stellar population, an upper surviving main sequence mass near is reasonable because more massive stars have shorter lifetimes; low-mass main sequence stars also contain much of the surviving stellar mass. However, red giants and other evolved stars can contribute a large fraction of the light despite their small numbers, so omitting them generally makes this calculated mass-to-light ratio too large. Omitting stellar remnants has the opposite effect on the inferred mass, and a single cubic mass-luminosity relation is only approximate across the stated range. Finally, a single initial mass function down to is steeper and more low-mass-heavy than commonly adopted distributions, which flatten at low mass. Ten solar units is a useful toy-model estimate, not a precision stellar-population prediction.
Objects near the derived cutoff are too faint for their absence in ordinary star counts alone to exclude a massive dark matter halo. The decisive test is gravitational microlensing: compact objects passing in front of background stars produce transient magnification even if they emit no detectable light. For a lens at distance and a source at , the physical Einstein radius and event timescale are
For , and , a lens gives days, within the regime tested by suitably sampled gravitational microlensing surveys. The microlensing optical depth is
so at fixed compact-object mass density it is independent of the individual lens mass: reducing individual mass changes the event durations rather than hiding the total lensing probability.
EROS observations of the Magellanic Clouds found far fewer candidate events than a halo dominated by compact objects would predict and excluded such objects as the principal Galactic halo component over , under their tested halo models. Their often-quoted eight-percent bound is specifically near , not a uniform bound at every lens mass. A halo dominated by the approximately Jupiter-mass objects needed here is incompatible with those microlensing constraints. Deep optical and infrared counts also restrict a large population of luminous low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, while the cosmic baryon fraction provides a separate constraint on explaining all cosmological dark matter with baryonic objects.
Use hypercharge normalized by , and express all matter fermions as left-handed Weyl spinors. Thus denote the charge conjugates of the right-handed Standard Model fermions; the superscript is unrelated to the antiparticle marker . Each chiral superfield contains a complex scalar field and a Weyl spinor, while each vector superfield contains a gauge boson and a gaugino. The complete propagating content of the Minimal supersymmetric Standard Model before electroweak symmetry breaking is:
SectorComponent field representationSpinFamilies or copies
, quark Weyl spinors
, squarks
, quark Weyl spinor
, squark
, quark Weyl spinor
, squark
, lepton Weyl spinors
, sleptons
, lepton Weyl spinor
, slepton
, Higgs complex scalar fields
, higgsinos
, Higgs complex scalar fields
, higgsinos
Color vector multiplet, gluons adjoint,
Color vector multiplet, gluinos adjoint,
Weak vector multiplet, weak gauge bosons adjoint,
Weak vector multiplet, winos adjoint,
Hypercharge vector multiplet, hypercharge gauge boson
Hypercharge vector multiplet, bino
The marker means that conjugate antiparticle states must also be counted: a charged Weyl spinor has a particle helicity and a distinct antiparticle helicity, and a complex scalar field has particle and antiparticle excitations. The real adjoint gauge bosons and adjoint Majorana fermions already contain their conjugate states, so no extra marker is attached to them. For example, the charged combinations are both contained in the one real weak triplet. There are no right-handed-neutrino chiral superfields, no gravitino, and no propagating auxiliary fields in this field table. The matter sector has gauge components; the two Higgs chiral doublets add four. Thus the count is , before mass effects are considered.
R-parity is the multiplicative discrete quantum number , with baryon number , lepton number and spin . Ordinary quarks, leptons, Higgs scalars and gauge bosons have ; their sparticles have . For superfields the equivalent rule is matter parity : are odd, and and the gauge superfields are even. With contracting weak indices and implicit color contractions, the renormalizable R-parity-conserving MSSM superpotential is
Signs of the three Yukawa couplings can be absorbed into their matrices. Every term has even matter parity and zero hypercharge; holomorphy requires the two independent Higgs chiral doublets, rather than using in a superpotential.
Conserved R-parity forces an even number of odd particles in a process whose incoming particles are all ordinary particles, so colliders produce sparticles in pairs or another even multiplicity. Their decay chains end in the stable lightest supersymmetric particle. A neutral, weakly interacting lightest supersymmetric particle, commonly a neutralino after electroweak symmetry breaking, escapes the detector and gives missing transverse momentum; it is also a possible dark matter constituent. Stability alone does not establish its relic abundance, and a charged or colored stable lightest supersymmetric particle is not the usual viable dark matter candidate. Conserved R-parity forbids the renormalizable interactions responsible for the decay below. It does not by itself forbid higher-dimensional proton-decay operators: the superpotential operators and have even matter parity. Thus the renormalizable R-parity-conserving MSSM protects the proton, while ultraviolet physics can still induce its decay.
The gauge-invariant renormalizable R-parity-violating superpotential is
Here and because of the weak and color antisymmetric contractions. The first two trilinear terms and the bilinear term violate lepton number, whereas the term violates baryon number. The are dimensionless and has mass dimension one.
For a concrete squark-mediated proton decay channel, take and nonzero. Antisymmetry allows these indices: the exchanged scalar is a strange squark, not a repeated down flavor in . Two quarks in the proton undergo ; the spectator combines with into the component of . The baryon-violating Feynman vertex and lepton-violating Feynman vertex give .
Figure 1.
Proton decay through baryon- and lepton-number-violating strange-squark exchange
. Details.
At momenta small compared with the squark mass , its scalar propagator is of order . Eliminating it generates a dimension-six four-fermion proton-decay operator, schematically , with coefficient . Consequently the dimensionless decay amplitude is of order , and phase space supplies one more power of to the width:
This is a dimensional estimate; phase-space constants and hadronic matrix elements change its coefficient, not its fourth-power dependence on . For order-one couplings and , the stated lifetime limit is . Therefore , giving .
Such a mass is incompatible with the intended weak-scale MSSM explanation of the hierarchy problem: squarks that cancel the Higgs-sector sensitivity to high scales must not introduce a new enormous splitting from their light quark partners. For example, with order-one couplings would give only . The field content alone does not mathematically prohibit extremely heavy superpartners, but that choice sacrifices the weak-scale naturalness motivation. The usual resolution is conserved R-parity, or sufficiently suppressed simultaneous baryon number and lepton number violation, rather than making the exchanged squark this heavy.
Putting the whole assumed gas reservoir into stars during the nominal galactic dynamical time gives
An order-unity shorter collapse clock would raise this to a few thousand solar masses per year. The Milky Way's present star formation rate is only of order a few solar masses per year; for example, A determination combining Galactic measurements finds about with a specified initial mass function. The extreme rapid-collapse rate is therefore roughly three orders of magnitude larger, resembling an intense short-lived starburst galaxy phase rather than ongoing ordinary disc star formation. This estimate assumes all the quoted mass can form stars; it would be smaller if some mass were nonbaryonic dark matter or if the conversion efficiency were below unity.
Typical present elliptical galaxies are dominated by old stellar populations: their brightest short-lived stars have disappeared, leaving faint long-lived stars and stellar remnants, so luminosity per unit stellar mass is low. Ongoing star formation in many spiral galaxies and irregular galaxies supplies luminous young stars, giving a smaller stellar mass-to-light ratio in a fixed band; dark matter, the initial mass function and aperture must also be specified if the quoted ratio is dynamical.
A general scalar cosmological perturbation has four scalar metric functions: a lapse perturbation, a scalar shift, a spatial curvature perturbation and a scalar spatial shear. The two scalar functions in a cosmological gauge transformation can set the shift and shear to zero. For nondegenerate spatial modes this gives conformal Newtonian gauge, leaving the two potentials and . The scalar traceless spatial Einstein equation makes their difference proportional to scalar anisotropic stress. In general relativity, with no scalar anisotropic stress and the usual boundary conditions, . Pressure alone does not spoil equality; free-streaming relativistic species can do so through their anisotropic stress.
Write , the Weyl lensing potential. A conformal rescaling leaves the unparameterized null geodesics unchanged, although the affine parameter changes. To first order, the conformal optical metric for scalar perturbations has
The only nonzero connection coefficients at this order are
Here spatial indices are raised with . An affine parameter for this rescaled metric therefore obeys
The first line is also , since the derivative of the potential is along the ray.
Put . The chain rule gives . Eliminating the affine acceleration gives
The extra spatial-gradient term inside the parentheses does not replace the spatial term already contained in the total derivative.
At reception, the null condition is . With the specified unit propagation vector , this implies
The zero-order trajectory is . In every term already containing a first-order potential, we may substitute . Defining the transverse projector , the first-order geodesic equation becomes
Integrating with the reception position and velocity gives the first-order photon trajectory in scalar perturbations:
Its first derivative at reception is , and differentiating twice gives the previous equation. For a first-order calculation, evaluating the integrals on the unperturbed ray is sufficient; shifting their evaluation points by the first-order displacement changes them only at second order. This is the Born approximation in cosmological lensing.
To fix the angular-deflection sign, define , , and . The latter is the unlensed coordinate direction to the source, while the former is its apparent direction measured by the observer. The longitudinal integral changes the radial distance, not the direction at this order. The transverse displacement is
Dividing by yields
This is the angular deflection kernel for cosmological lensing. It depends on the sum of the two metric potentials; setting them equal reduces it to the familiar twice-the-Newtonian-potential expression. With angular derivatives, the lensing potential is , and its angular gradient is .
Gravitational lensing displaces apparent source positions and produces magnification and shear through angular derivatives of the deflection. Weak gravitational lensing of galaxy shapes probes the foreground mass distribution, including dark matter. Lensing also remaps the cosmic microwave background, smoothing its acoustic features and converting part of its E-mode polarization into B modes. Strong deflections can produce multiple images, though a single first-order ray calculation does not describe that regime completely.
If the gas can cool appreciably below the virial temperature, radiative cooling removes thermal energy and pressure support. In a dark matter halo the gas then contracts, dissipating more energy as it falls. Efficient condensation requires the radiative gas cooling time to be short enough compared with the relevant dynamical or assembly time; merely having an available low-temperature transition does not guarantee that the gas reaches it quickly.
The collisionless dark matter cannot lose comparable energy through radiation and remains extended. Gas with appreciable conserved angular momentum stops radial collapse when rotation supports it, often forming a disk; lower-angular-momentum gas reaches a more compact central region. Cold dense gas can fragment into self-gravitating clouds and form stars if its gravitational instability overcomes remaining support. Stellar feedback subsequently reheats or expels gas and regulates the conversion. Efficient cooling enables central baryonic condensation and star formation; angular momentum and feedback determine the resulting galaxy.
If gas cannot radiate enough energy to fall below the virial temperature, infall converts gravitational energy into heat through shocks and compression. Thermal pressure can support an extended atmosphere in the dark matter halo. It need not have the same density profile as the collisionless dark matter, because its entropy and pressure matter.
A useful quantitative comparison is the radiative gas cooling time against the halo dynamical time . If cooling remains slow or a heating source balances it, the gas stays predominantly hot and diffuse, rather than forming a compact, cold, self-gravitating stellar system. Without sufficient cooling, most baryons remain pressure-supported halo gas. Very slow cooling can still feed gradual central condensation; the condition is about energy loss relative to the evolution time, not an absolute prohibition on any inward motion.
Let and define the cosmological density power spectrum by . The contribution per logarithmic wave-number interval is the dimensionless cosmological power spectrum . The linear cosmological mass variance on mass scale is
with a comoving smoothing radius and the top-hat filter in Fourier space. On halo scales the observed spectrum is consistent with greater variance at smaller masses. Growth therefore brings smaller objects to the collapse threshold earlier, statistically; larger structures assemble by accretion and dark-matter halo mergers. This statistical growth from smaller bound systems to larger ones is hierarchical galaxy formation. It is an ordering of dark-matter assembly, not a rule that every small visible galaxy must precede every large visible galaxy.
For linear modes the linear growth factor gives . During matter domination , so and the characteristic nonlinear mass increases. Once modes become nonlinear, coupling between scales and halo formation change the shape, so the same multiplication cannot be used for the entire late-time spectrum. At low redshift accelerated expansion suppresses linear growth. Galaxy clustering traces the matter spectrum with galaxy bias; it should not be equated directly with an unbiased matter measurement.
The broad linear shape was set by the cosmological transfer function before and around matter-radiation equality, with baryonic acoustic structure also imprinted before recombination. A nearly scale-invariant primordial curvature spectrum has , with close to one. After converting curvature perturbations to matter-density perturbations,
Thus nearly scale-invariant primordial curvature does not mean a constant density . Modes with enter the horizon after equality and have . Modes with enter during radiation domination, when radiation controls the expansion and cold-matter perturbations grow only slowly. The cold-dark-matter transfer function behaves approximately as at large . Hence the density spectrum turns over near :
The turnover records the equality horizon, while the late nonlinear excess records gravitational clustering. On galactic scales the effective slope is greater than , giving the growing small-scale variance needed for hierarchical galaxy formation.
Cold dark matter has negligible primordial thermal velocities and a very short collisionless free streaming length on galactic scales. Warm dark matter has appreciable residual velocities while structure is being seeded; particles stream across small fluctuations and reduce their contrast. Its cosmological transfer function is consequently cut off below a characteristic length, suppressing low-mass halos and delaying their formation. Above that cutoff its assembly can still be hierarchical. The important distinction is the free-streaming scale, rather than the present temperature or an arbitrary particle-mass label.
Linear evolution assumes . When becomes of order unity, overdense regions depart strongly from the Hubble flow and can turn around and collapse. Collisionless dark matter develops multistream motion after trajectories cross; gravitational mixing redistributes energy and produces a bound dark matter halo. The formal infinite-density collapse of an ideal spherical pressureless solution is not the physical endpoint. A roughly virialized halo has and a characteristic virial velocity . Its gas virial temperature is conventionally
It measures the thermal energy associated with the gravitational potential; the numerical factor depends on the velocity-dispersion convention. It does not imply that the collisionless dark matter has a thermodynamic gas temperature.
The unheaded request about baryon conversion efficiency of a halo is also answered here. Define using the cosmic baryon fraction . In small halos, shallow potentials let stellar feedback drive outflows or repeatedly heat star-forming gas; supernova energy per stellar mass is roughly fixed while binding energy per gas mass scales as . Photoheating during reionization also prevents very small halos from retaining or accreting cool gas. Molecular/atomic cooling thresholds further reduce star formation in the smallest systems. These effects make fall toward low mass.
Near , gas can cool efficiently and the potential is deep enough to retain more of it, while a long-lived hot atmosphere and maintenance heating are less effective than in larger systems. At high mass, higher virial temperature and lower cooling efficiency let a substantial hot atmosphere persist. Active-galactic-nucleus feedback can prevent that atmosphere from supplying cold gas and can expel some gas; the cooling-time bottleneck alone is not an adequate explanation for the low stellar fractions of massive groups and clusters. The peak reflects a competition between gas supply/cooling and feedback, rather than complete conversion of all baryons at a sharply universal mass. Its exact location and height depend on epoch, metallicity, gas history and the stellar population included.
In the Lambda-CDM model, nearly Gaussian primordial density contrasts grow under gravity within an expanding universe containing cold dark matter, ordinary baryons and a cosmological constant. The cold dark matter is effectively collisionless and has negligible pressure on galactic scales. Before recombination, baryons are coupled to the photon fluid: radiation pressure and acoustic oscillations prevent their perturbations from behaving like pressureless matter. After recombination they can fall into the gravitational potentials already established by dark matter, subject to gas pressure and the Jeans mass.
For small density contrasts, evolution is linear. On pressure-free scales the growing mode is multiplied by the linear growth factor , with during matter domination. The cosmological density power spectrum can be written
Here is the cosmological transfer function. For nearly scale-invariant initial conditions, the large-scale matter spectrum behaves approximately as , whereas well inside the matter-radiation equality scale it falls approximately as , until the microscopic dark-matter cutoff matters. This fall of the dimensional does not imply less fluctuation power on every smaller mass scale: the power per logarithmic wavenumber is , and the smoothed matter density variance is obtained by integrating it against a mass-dependent window. Over the relevant cold-dark-matter hierarchy, smaller mass windows generally have larger variance.
The hierarchical galaxy formation picture follows: fluctuations on small mass scales typically reach the nonlinear collapse threshold first, while larger objects assemble later through accretion and dark-matter halo mergers. It is a statistical ordering, not a claim that every small object precedes every large rare peak. When becomes order unity, the linear growth factor is no longer a solution for the local density. Collisionless dark matter develops multistream regions and bound dark matter halos; phase mixing and violent relaxation redistribute orbital energies, and virialized structures approximately obey the virial theorem.
Baryons have an additional nonlinear route. Infall and shocks convert bulk kinetic energy into thermal energy, with characteristic virial temperature
Unlike collisionless dark matter, the gas can lose this energy through radiative cooling. The optically thin gas cooling time is the thermal-energy density divided by the radiative loss rate, for example
The density convention in must agree with the denominator; the astrophysical cooling function can also be defined using instead. The cooling criterion for galaxy formation compares this time with the collapse or supply time. Rapidly cooling gas loses pressure support, contracts and can form stars. Slowly cooling gas remains in a hot atmosphere. Stable virial shocks are not obligatory in every low-mass system: gas can also arrive in cold streams and cool while being accreted.
Angular momentum prevents indefinite radial contraction. Tidal torque theory supplies an initial halo spin, and later mergers change it. If gas radiates energy while retaining much of its specific angular momentum, it settles into a rotationally supported galactic disk rather than reaching the centre. The relation explains why modest halo spin can set a disk radius much smaller than its virial radius of a dark-matter halo. Torques, bars and gravitational encounters can transport angular momentum outwards and feed central concentrations; radiative cooling alone does not remove it.
Galaxy mergers alter stellar structure as well as assembling mass. A major galaxy merger can strongly disturb or destroy an existing galactic disk, randomizing stellar orbits and creating a spheroid through violent relaxation. A gas-rich galaxy merger also permits dissipation, inflow and a burst of star formation; gas left over or accreted afterwards can rebuild a galactic disk. Minor galaxy mergers add stars to outer components, thicken disks and grow bulges. Dry galaxy mergers add stellar mass and can increase size without much new star formation. Halo merging therefore does not imply instantaneous merging of its galaxies: satellite orbital decay requires Chandrasekhar dynamical friction and can take a substantial time.
The atomic and molecular cooling thresholds for galaxy formation supply a lower characteristic scale. Primordial atomic gas cools inefficiently below roughly because electronic excitation is suppressed. The corresponding halo mass is of order at a redshift of order ten, with approximate dependence at fixed threshold temperature. Molecular hydrogen can cool gas at hundreds of kelvin and permit smaller early objects, provided it forms and survives dissociating radiation. Metal-line cooling changes these thresholds after enrichment. Thus the atomic threshold is not an absolute minimum mass for all stellar systems.
At the other end, sufficiently massive dark matter halos have high virial temperatures and low-density hot gas. Above the strong atomic-line-cooling interval, thermal bremsstrahlung has . At comparable halo gas density, , while depends mainly on formation density. Cooling therefore becomes less able to condense all the gas within the available time. This upper galaxy mass from gas cooling argument selects galaxy-sized condensations, broadly halo masses around – in simple low-redshift estimates, rather than single luminous galaxies containing every baryon in a group or cluster. Its numerical scale depends on epoch, metallicity and gas profile. Subsequent galaxy mergers can build larger stellar systems; cooling is not an absolute upper bound on their final mass.
Finally, a Press-Schechter halo mass function has many low-mass objects and a steep high-mass cutoff, while the luminosity function of galaxies also has a faint component and a bright cutoff, often described by a Schechter function. The two shapes are related through the halo-to-galaxy luminosity mapping, not by identifying luminosity with total halo mass. In the idealized one-central-galaxy, no-scatter limit,
If and , then . A constant conversion gives similar shapes. Actual stellar feedback, inefficient low-temperature cooling and reionization suppress faint galaxies relative to small haloes, while long cooling times and active-galactic-nucleus feedback suppress luminosity at large halo masses. Satellites, scatter, stellar populations and dust further affect the correspondence. The halo hierarchy supplies the gravitational framework; cooling, angular momentum and feedback determine which parts become luminous galaxies.
Let describe the halo and let . The cosmic baryon fraction is , so the specified settled fraction gives . The specific angular momentum constraint at the disk edge is
To infer an actual circular speed one must specify the disk's radial mass distribution: enclosed mass does not determine a disc rotation curve. Introduce a finite geometry coefficient by . A rounded, centrally concentrated disk permits a monopole estimate at its outer edge; it is an explicit approximation, not the spherical shell theorem applied exactly to a razor-thin disk. Ignore the force of the unsettled baryons as well as the dark matter within the disk. Using , the angular-momentum estimate of a self-gravitating galactic disk gives
An exact disk answer cannot be fixed by total disk mass alone; the dependence on records that missing input.
For the numerical virial radius of a dark-matter halo, adopt mean density times the critical density at the formation epoch. This conventional definition gives
The supplied expansion law gives , and hence . Taking yields
The corresponding virial mass of a dark-matter halo is , and . Other overdensity conventions give at fixed .
Interpret the wavelength separation as an observed-frame local mean near the redshift in question. Since Lyman-alpha absorption appears at , the incidence is
Assume one counted absorption system per intercepted disk, no unrelated forest systems or missed absorbers, unity neutral covering fraction, and a locally slowly varying population. Let be the proper interception cross-section and the comoving number density. The proper density is , and the proper line element along the light path is . Thus the absorber incidence and comoving number density relation is
For a thin circular disk, the projected area is . Isotropically oriented normals have , so the random-orientation absorbing-disk cross-section is . Consequently
If all disks are taken face-on instead, . Generally the random-orientation result scales as and is divided by the neutral covering fraction. The finite mean redshift spacing is sizable, so a precision inference would integrate the incidence over the actual redshift interval rather than identify it with one local value.
There is also a halo abundance mass-budget bound on this formal result. The present mean matter density for these parameters is . Distinct haloes of this mass cannot have , even if every matter particle belonged to them. Yet the inferred random-orientation population has
Even the face-on estimate exceeds this bound by about twenty-one. The numerical incidence result is conditional; the supplied population assumptions are not cosmologically consistent under this standard virial and compact-disk estimate. A larger neutral-gas absorption radius, a different absorber population, or different physical inputs are needed. For example, random orientations would require an absorbing radius at least about merely to reach the all-matter upper bound, much larger than the calculated centrifugal radius. This check does not change the algebraic answer, but prevents treating it as a realizable population.
Set , and . The flattened power-law gravitational potential is . In axisymmetric cylindrical coordinates, the Poisson equation for Newtonian gravity gives
The first derivatives are and . Differentiating again and collecting powers gives
Therefore the required mass density is
This is a formal density for arbitrary , but a physical dark matter distribution must be nonnegative. The density positivity for a flattened power-law potential condition is
Necessity follows by evaluating on the midplane and symmetry axis; sufficiency follows because both numerator coefficients are then nonnegative. In this range the origin is a locally integrable density cusp: the mass enclosed near radius scales as and tends to zero, so no point mass needs adding. The scale-free distribution has infinite total mass at large radius and represents an idealized background, not a finite isolated halo.
For the cold, non-self-gravitating disk, radial balance of a circular orbit is . Thus
The displayed positive root chooses the rotation orientation; the opposite orientation has the negative of this angular frequency.