Dynamics of Dwarf Galaxies Disfavor Stellar-Mass Black Holes as Dark Matter

Savvas M. Koushiappas and Abraham Loeb

Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 041102 – Published 24 July 2017

Abstract

We study the effects of black hole dark matter on the dynamical evolution of stars in dwarf galaxies. We find that mass segregation leads to a depletion of stars in the center of dwarf galaxies and the appearance of a ring in the projected stellar surface density profile. Using Segue 1 as an example we show that current observations of the projected surface stellar density rule out at the 99.9% confidence level the possibility that more than 6% of the dark matter is composed of black holes with a mass of few tens of solar masses.

Received 5 April 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.041102

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Classical black holes Cosmology Formation & evolution of stars & galaxies Inflation Massive compact halo objects

Particles & FieldsGravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Authors & Affiliations

Savvas M. Koushiappas^1,2,* and Abraham Loeb^2,†

¹Department of Physics, Brown University, 182 Hope St., Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA
²Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard University, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA