The Angular Momentum Distribution within Halos in Different Dark Matter Models

D. N. Chen, Y. P. Jing

Published 2002-01-31, updated 2002-05-30Version 5

We study the angular momentum profile of dark matter halos for a statistical sample drawn from a set of high-resolution cosmological simulations of $256^3$ particles. Two typical Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models have been analyzed, and the halos are selected to have at least $3\times 10^4$ particles in order to reliably measure the angular momentum profile. In contrast with the recent claims of Bullock et al., we find that the degree of misalignment of angular momentum within a halo is very high. About 50 percent of halos have more than 10 percent of halo mass in the mass of negative angular momentum $j$. After the mass of negative $j$ is excluded, the cumulative mass function $M(<j)$ follows approximately the universal function proposed by Bullock et al., though we still find a significant fraction of halos ($\sim 50%$) which exhibit systematic deviations from the universal function. Our results, however, are broadly in good agreement with a recent work of van den Bosch et al.. We also study the angular momentum profile of halos in a Warm Dark Matter (WDM) model and a Self-Interacting Dark Matter (SIDM) model. We find that the angular momentum profile of halos in the WDM is statistically indistinguishable from that in the CDM model, but the angular momentum of halos in the SIDM is reduced by the self-interaction of dark matter.