Midway evaluation in Physics - Tamari Meshveliani

Doctoral candidate: Tamari Meshveliani

Title: Gravothermal collapse of Self-Interacting Dark Matter halos as the origin of Intermediate Mass Black Holes in Milky Way satellites

Doctoral committee:
Jesús Zavala Franco, Professor at the Faculty of Physical Sciences, University of Iceland
Gunnlaugur Björnsson, Research Scientist at the UI Science Institute
David J. E. Marsh, Lecturer at the Department of Physics, King's College London, United Kingdom

Abstract

Milky Way (MW) satellites exhibit a diverse range of internal kinematics, which in turn reflects the diversity of subhalo density profiles. These profiles include large cores and dense cusps, which any successful dark matter model must explain simultaneously. Such diversity can be a natural outcome of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) models, in which the cross section passes the threshold for the gravothermal collapse phase at the characteristic velocities of MW satellites. As a consequence of the runaway collapse, subhalos in the collapse phase are expected to have cuspy inner profiles and a SIDM-driven intermediate mass black hole at their center, while some satellites are expected to be hosted by subhalos in the classical SIDM core phase.