The phase-space structure of tidally stripped haloes

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Vol. 468; no. 2; pp. 2345 - 2358
• Main Authors: Drakos, Nicole E., Taylor, James E., Benson, Andrew J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 01.06.2017
• Subjects: methods: numerical; dark matter; galaxies: haloes
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx652

Abstract We propose a new method for generating equilibrium models of spherical systems of collisionless particles that are finite in extent, but whose central regions resemble dark matter haloes from cosmological simulations. This method involves iteratively removing unbound particles from a Navarro–Frenk–White (NFW) profile truncated sharply at some radius. The resulting models are extremely stable, and thus provide a good starting point for N-body simulations of isolated haloes. We provide a code to generate such models for NFW and a variety of other common density profiles. We then develop an analytic approximation to this truncated distribution function. Our method proceeds by analogy with the King model, truncating and shifting the original distribution function of an infinitely extended NFW profile in energy space. We show that the density profiles of our models closely resemble the tidally truncated density profiles seen previously in studies of satellite evolution. Pursuing this analogy further with a series of simulations of tidal mass-loss, we find that our models provide a good approximation to the full distribution function of tidally stripped systems, thus allowing theoretically motivated phase-space calculations for such systems.