The Dekel-Zhao profile: a mass-dependent dark-matter density profile with flexible inner slope and analytic potential, velocity dispersion, and lensing properties

Abstract

We explore a function with two shape parameters for the dark-matter halo density profile subject to baryonic effects, which is a special case of the general Zhao family of models applied to simulated dark matter haloes by Dekel et al. This profile has variable inner slope and concentration parameter, and analytic expressions for the gravitational potential, velocity dispersion, and lensing properties. Using the NIHAO cosmological simulations, we find that it provides better fits than the Einasto profile and the generalized NFW profile with variable inner slope, in particular towards the halo centers. We show that the profile parameters are correlated with the stellar-to-halo mass ratio M_star/M_vir. This defines a mass-dependent density profile describing the average dark matter profiles in all galaxies, which can be directly applied to observed rotation curves of galaxies, gravitational lenses, and semi-analytic models of galaxy formation or satellite-galaxy evolution. The effect of baryons manifests itself by a significant flattening of the inner density slope and a 20% decrease of the concentration parameter for M_star/M_vir = 10^−3.5 to 10⁻², corresponding to M_star ∼ 10^{7 − 10} M_⊙. The accuracy by which this profile fits simulated galaxies is similar to certain multi-parameter, mass-dependent profiles, but its fewer parameters and analytic nature make it most desirable for many purposes.