On the Origin of the Internal Structure of Haloes

Abstract

High-resolution N-body simulations of hierarchical cosmologies have shown that the density and velocity dispersion profiles of dark-matter haloes display well-definite universal forms whose origin remains unknown. In the present paper, we calculate the internal structure of haloes expected to arise in any such cosmologies by simply taking into account that halo growth proceeds through an alternate sequence of discrete major mergers and long periods of gentle accretion. Major mergers cause the violent relaxation of the system subject to the boundary conditions imposed by accreting layers beginning to fall in at that moment. Accretion makes the system develop inside-out from the previous seed according to the spherical infall model. The predicted structure is in very good agreement with the results of numerical simulations, particularly for moderate and low mass haloes. We find strong indications that the slight departure observed in more massive systems is not due to a poorer theoretical prediction, but to the more marked effects of the limited resolution used in the simulations on the empirical profiles. This may have important consequences on the reported universality of halo structure.