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  4. The Smith Cloud and its dark matter halo: survival of a Galactic disc passage
 
research article

The Smith Cloud and its dark matter halo: survival of a Galactic disc passage

Nichols, Matthew  
•
Mirabal, Nestor
•
Agertz, Oscar
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2014
Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society

Under conservative assumptions about the Galaxy, the derived velocity of the Smith Cloud indicates that it will have undergone at least one passage of the Galactic disc. Using hydrodynamic simulations, we examine the present-day structure of the Smith Cloud and find that a dark matter supported cloud is able to reproduce the observed present-day neutral hydrogen mass, column density distribution and morphology. In this case, the dark matter halo becomes elongated owing to the tidal interaction with the Galactic disc. Clouds in models neglecting dark matter confinement are destroyed upon disc passage, unless the initial cloud mass is well in excess of what is observed today. We then determine integrated flux upper limits to the gamma-ray emission around such a hypothesized dark matter core in the Smith Cloud. No statistically significant core or extended gamma-ray emission are detected down to a 95 per cent confidence level upper limit of 1.4 x 10(-10) ph cm(-2) s(-1) in the 1-300 GeV energy range. For the derived distance of 12.4 kpc, the Fermi upper limits set the first tentative constraints on the dark matter cross-sections annihilating into tau(+)tau(-) and b (b) over bar for a high-velocity cloud.

  • Details
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Type
research article
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stu1028
Web of Science ID

WOS:000339924900003

Author(s)
Nichols, Matthew  
Mirabal, Nestor
Agertz, Oscar
Lockman, Felix J.
Bland-Hawthorn, Joss
Date Issued

2014

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Published in
Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society
Volume

442

Issue

4

Start page

2883

End page

2891

Subjects

ISM: clouds

•

ISM: individual objects: Smith Cloud

•

Galaxy: halo

•

dark matter

•

gamma-rays: general

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LASTRO  
Available on Infoscience
October 23, 2014
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/107767
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