Substructure and Halo Density Profiles in a Warm Dark Matter Cosmology

We performed a series of high-resolution collisionless N-body simulations designed to study the substructure of Milky Way-size galactic halos (host halos) and the density profiles of halos in a warm dark matter (WDM) scenario with a nonvanishing cosmological constant. The virial masses of the host halos range from 3.5 × 10¹² to 1.7 × 10¹² h^-1 M_☉, and they have more than 10⁵ particles each. A key feature of the WDM power spectrum is the free-streaming length R_f,WDM, which fixes an additional parameter for the model of structure formation. We analyze the substructure of host halos using three R_f,WDM values: 0.2, 0.1, and 0.05 Mpc, and compare results to the predictions of the cold dark matter (CDM) model. We find that guest halos (satellites) do form in the WDM scenario, but are more easily destroyed by dynamical friction and tidal disruption than their counterparts in a CDM model. The small number of guest halos that we find in the WDM models with respect to the CDM one is the result of a lower guest halo accretion and a higher satellite destruction rate. These two phenomena operate almost with the same intensity in delivering a reduced number of guest halos at z = 0. For the model with R_f,WDM = 0.1 Mpc, the number of accreted small halos is a factor of 2.5 below that of the CDM model, while the fraction of destroyed satellites is almost twice as large as that of the CDM model. The larger the R_f,WDM value, the greater the size of these two effects and the smaller the abundance of satellites. Under the assumption that each guest halo hosts a luminous galaxy, we find that the observed circular velocity function of satellites around the Milky Way and Andromeda is well described by the R_f,WDM = 0.1 Mpc WDM model. In the R_f,WDM = 0.1-0.2 Mpc models, the surviving guest halos at z = 0, whose masses are in the range M_h ≈ 10⁹-10¹¹ h^-1 M_☉, have an average concentration parameter c_1/5 = r(M_h)/r(M_h/5), which is approximately twice as small as that of the corresponding CDM guest halos. This difference very likely produces the higher satellite destruction rate found in the WDM models. The density profile of host halos is well described by the Navarro, Frenk, & White (NFW) fit, whereas guest halos show a wide variety of density profiles. A tendency to form shallow cores is not evident; the profiles, however, are limited by a poor mass resolution in the innermost regions where shallow cores could be expected.