Dwarf Galaxies Under Gravothermal Core-Collapse

Athithiya Aravinthan

The existence of dark matter (DM) has been founded solely on its gravitational interactions and we know very little about its particle properties. Recently, there have been studies investigating the possibility of collisions between DM particles. Despite lack of evidence at dwarf galaxy scales to constrain the rate of such collisions, a recent study (Correa 2021) is predicting that the rate of DM-DM particle interaction is so large that the local dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way are in gravothermal core-collapse, a state where DM-DM collisions increase the density in the central regions. This talk will focus on the use of cosmological simulations to investigate the evolution of dwarf galaxies undergoing gravothermal core-collapse, as well as explore potential observational signatures that depict their collapsing nature.