Evidence for universal structure in galactic halos

William H. Kinney, Pierre Sikivie

Published 1999-06-02Version 1

The late infall of dark matter onto a galaxy produces structure (such as caustics) in the distribution of dark matter in the halo. We argue that such structure is likely to occur generically on length scales proportional to $l \sim t_0 v_{rot}$, where $t_0$ is the age of the universe and $v_{rot}$ is the rotation velocity of the galaxy. A set of 32 extended galactic rotation curves is analyzed. For each curve, the radial coordinate is rescaled according to $r\to \tilde r \equiv r (v_0 / v_{rot})$, where we choose $v_0 = 220 km/s$. A linear fit to each rescaled rotation curve is subtracted, and the residuals are binned and averaged. The sample shows significant features near $\tilde r = 40 kpc$ and $\tilde r = 20 kpc$. This is consistent with the predictions of the self-similar caustic ring model of galactic halos.