Title: The Distribution of Dark Matter in the Milky Way Galaxy
Abstract: A wealth of recent observational studies shows the dark matter in the Milky Way to have the following fundamental properties: 1) there is no detectable dark matter associated with the Galactic disk -- the dark matter is distributed in a purely halo distribution with local volume density near the Earth 0.3GeV/cc = 0.01Msun/pc3 2) The stellar mass function is both universal and convergent at low masses -- there is no significant very low luminosity baryonic dark matter associated with stellar light. Fundamentally, dark mass does not follow light. 3) The smallest scale length on which dark matter is clustered is in the Milky Way's satellite dwarf Spheroidal galaxies, where dark matter has a characteristic length scale about 1kpc = 10^{20}m, and mass density 0.05Msun/pc3 = 1.5GeV/cc.
Publication Year: 1997
Publication Date: 1997-02-10
Language: en
Type: article
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