Affiliation: University of the Western Cape

Contribution: Poster

Title: Using LADUMA to study the dark matter properties of galaxies

Abstract: Looking At the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array (LADUMA) is a large survey that will probe HI emission that extends to a redshift (z) of 1.4. LADUMA will directly detect many galaxies in HI line emission, many of which will be observed with an HI interferometer for the first time. Due to this, the data products and models that will be presented, are the first of its kind generated for these galaxies. This work aims to dynamically model two particularly interesting LADUMA galaxies, of which an in-depth mass-modelling is done for one of these galaxies. The HI total intensity maps of these galaxies show them to have very interesting morphologies. However, their HI velocity fields suggest their kinematics to be rotation-dominated. The HI data cubes are used to generate 3D tilted-ring models of these galaxies in order to measure their total rotation curves. In order to supplement the HI data, especially for the mass-modelling process, optical images from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) are used to constrain the galaxy’s stellar properties. From the HI and optical images, the radial distributions of stellar and gaseous mass in the galaxy is measured and used to calculate the baryonic contribution to the total rotation curve. Finally, dark matter models are fit to the residual rotation curve in order to constrain the distributions of dark matter.

This contribution can be found in the Poster Hall.